Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, again it's certainly a privilege to get to speak in this hallowed hall, where so many courageous decisions have been made, and also so many ill-begotten decisions have been made. Speaking of which, today in our Natural Resources Committee we voted a bill out of committee to deal with the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, disastrous oil spill that hopefully, maybe, prayerfully, maybe, they have gotten the cap on things and are going to be able to stop the oil from destroying lives and livelihoods. But our bill did some amazing things. For example, the bill we passed in committee--should be coming to the floor now for a vote for the whole Congress--provided $900 million a year for the next 30 years, through 2040, to buy more land for the Federal Government to sit on. Now, it was pointed out that actually we already own so much land, we have so many Federal parks, national parks that we can't take care of them, and we are not taking care of them. There is a report that indicated that just in maintenance alone we are $3.7 billion behind on just doing necessary maintenance to keep the Federal parks from falling apart. And we are not taking care of that. And here we voted $27 billion to buy more land for the Federal Government to sit on. And it's important to understand when the Federal Government buys any land at all, that land is immediately taken off of the tax rolls. And the schools, the local governments, the State governments are prohibited from taxing that land. So that land that has brought so much revenue in taxes to those schools, hired teachers, all that kind of thing, hired local servants, it goes away. And there for a while when this started 100 years-plus ago, old people were assured locally, well, don't worry, though, like if we take timberland, we will sell timber, and we will give you a cut of the proceeds. Well, that's gone away. So the Federal Government takes land and the local folks get nothing. Some say, oh, no, but it creates green jobs. Right. And just like Spain has found this year, as the report of the country that this administration and this majority has said repeatedly we want to emulate because they have moved toward a green economy, Spain has found that for every one green job that's been created they lost two jobs. And I am tired of looking into the faces of people who have lost their jobs due to no fault of their own, but due to terrible decisions by the public servants that were elected to come here to Washington and not meddle, not take over the country, but just to make sure there was a level playing field, people had an opportunity, not happiness, but the opportunity to pursue happiness. And what we find repeatedly is when this government, when any government weighs in and steps in and buys or takes over land, money, property, it doesn't really leave anybody happy. So, I got a little chart here we put together yesterday that shows where we have been on money that was appropriated in the budget, been appropriated to buy land. You've got over $100 million here, not quite $150 million in 2008, and that was with this majority. This majority took over in 2007, 2008, and they had already gone many times from where we were in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007. By 2008, the majority started just going many times over. That's how we got over $100 million to buy land in 2008. And then the same majority in 2009 kicked it up quite a bit more over the $150 million mark. 2010, this year, we are approaching nearly $300 million to buy more land for the Federal Government to sit on. And in this bill that passed committee today, there is this provision for $900 million. Why don't we just call it a billion? You know, you are that close. Doesn't seem like $100 million means that much to this administration. But it's $900 million a year for the next 30 years to buy more land. I had such great hopes. We were hearing responsible economists telling us, you know, there is a way out of this runaway deficit. Now, $1.5 trillion in 1 year, you know, it took the Bush administration a number of years to do that. And here, boom, 1 year we got it done here with this majority and this administration. But economists have said, you know, get responsible. Quit frittering away money like it was no issue, like it's growing on trees, because it's growing off of China, and they're saying they about got enough. And we are printing it. Got printing presses running like crazy printing it. We will eventually pay for that with inflation. So the vote today was as if we got all the money in the world. Why not just buy more land? And what we heard from people who live in the Western half of the country was, you've already taken so much of our State, why do you have to keep taking more and more? One Congressman from Utah, Rob Bishop, had offered a verbal proposal: How about, if you're so inclined to spend that much money, how about if we just say, okay, we will only buy land from now on from States in which the Federal Government owns less than 20 percent of the State? Because when you look at the Western United States, the red represents land owned by the Federal Government, you begin to understand why people in the West are saying haven't you taken enough of our land? This country didn't start out owning all the land. And as we've seen over and over, we're not taking care of what we've got. And we've got people who have lost their jobs, and yet last summer we passed a bill for $700 million to buy wild horses more habitat because there had been a bill before that that this majority passed that said you can't do anything about the overgrowing population of wild horses on Federal land. You can't use birth control, you can't sell them off in auctions. So they have proliferated. And at a time when Americans are being thrown out of their homes in record numbers this year, foreclosures are up higher than ever before, bankruptcies continue to be filed, the folks in charge decide, you know what, let's take care of the wild horses. They matter more to us than all these people getting thrown out of their homes and losing their livelihoods. That's more important. We have lost our priorities. And I understand it didn't just start in the last year-and-a-half. The President I admire greatly, who is smarter than most people give him credit for, a good man, he listened to maybe the worst Secretary of the Treasury we've ever had, Hank Paulson, as he ran around like Chicken Little saying the financial sky was falling, but give me $700 billion and I can go make my friends rich, and I can fix everything. So Goldman Sachs didn't suffer, AIG didn't suffer. And the American people are suffering. And I know I've heard people on the other side of the aisle, including this week, talking about, you know, all the rich, fat-cat Republicans, yet if you look at the truth--which is a good thing to look at time to time--you look at the truth and you find out that Wall Street families give to Democrats four times as much as they give to Republicans. You look at BP and you wonder why it took the Federal Government to intervene and call their hand? And they really haven't completely yet. And then you find out they gave much more to this administration than they did to the McCain campaign. They got heavy on Democratic lobbyists from administrations that were Democratic. They'd signed on to the crap-and-trade bill. We're pushing that to be passed. So this administration, this majority didn't want to buck their good friend that was going to help them push through some things that were not going to help America even though they were going to help BP get richer. So they hated to call their hand, and that's why it took so long. And we're fixing it by buying more land for the Federal Government. How in the world that makes sense. Now, we also had the committee vote against my amendment that was very important, protecting our homeland. My amendment to the bill was very simple, and it arose out of finding out during hearings that there was only one entity within the Mines and Minerals Management Service that was allowed to be unionized, and that was the offshore inspectors. Unionized. Well, union contracts usually have restrictions on travel, restrictions on how much that can be worked, things like that. And it reminded me a great deal of the job of sentry. And in mock war games when I was in the Army, I sat sentry. I wasn't about to go to sleep, be court-martialed for that, at least an article 15 punishment because you're it. You're the protection for the rest of the people there. You're supposed to be standing guard. That's what our offshore inspectors are. And they're unionized. And we were told by the Director of MMS that the real check of how we can be so sure that they're doing their job, we send them out in pairs. And we found out the last pair of offshore inspectors that went to the Deepwater Horizon rig before it blew was a father-and-son team. Yeah. So much for checks and balances. But that's what we got. So my amendment just said for people who are offshore, deepwater rig inspectors, you can't strike and you can't threaten to strike. Just like if you're in the military, you can't go on strike. You're protecting the country. Our offshore inspectors are what stand between our homeland and environmental disaster and the loss of lives as we had on the Deepwater Horizon rig. And all but one Democrat voted against my amendment, so our offshore inspectors can strike, can get out there on a rig and say, ``You know what? I'm what stands between our homeland and disaster, and either you give me what I want or I'm going on strike and you'll have no protection. And who knows, you may have another Deepwater Horizon happen because I'm not checking anything.'' If you've got a problem with your contract, then get your Congress, get others to help if you're working for the Federal Government. But if you're not working for the Federal Government as a government employee and yet at the same time you are the protection for a country, you shouldn't be able to strike. And in this case, even though MMS had become basically, we're told, a stagnant pond that stunk it up because of the cozy relationship between the people that worked there and Big Oil, it had to be divided into three parts. Well, we haven't found out how it's going to work out. I tried to find out what else was going to be unionized once it was split into three parts, was told they didn't know, didn't know how exactly it was going to come out. But from east Texas, we often find if you want to fix a stagnant, stinking pond, it doesn't help if you just divide it up into three parts. You've got to do something to fix it, and we haven't seen that happen. And, in fact, when we found out that a person involved in the leases that may have critical testimony as to why the price adjustment language was pulled out of the 1998-1999 leases that have now cost the Federal Treasury billions of dollars--1998-1999, under the Clinton administration. You want to know why they pulled that language out? It made billions extra for the oil companies, but it cost our treasury billions, because that language is normally in there. Why did they dictate that it be pulled out? And I was told at a hearing by the Inspector General, well, I wasn't able to talk to people that were critical into finding out why they pulled that language out because they've left government service. When the Clinton administration left, they left. And then after hearing President Obama talk about the cozy relationship between the people in the government managing minerals and Big Oil, I had a hunch and checked. And sure enough, that person, one of the people I was told had been involved and had direct knowledge about the language being pulled that cost us so many billions of dollars, made it for companies like BP, found out she'd gone to work for British Petroleum when she left the Clinton administration. And in June of last year, she came back to work for the same people that managed the affairs of British Petroleum offshore. Yep, the President knew what he was talking about. He has helped create a cozy relationship between those who were supposed to keep Big Oil honest and Big Oil. And we find out BP had 800 or so safety violations. And this administration dealt with those in a strong way--by giving them a safety award for a wonderful safety record. And yet they were apparently the only company that had that horrible safety record when compared with Exxon and others that had one or zero violations. You wonder why was BP entitled to a safety award, and then you find out who they gave most of their contributions to in the election. You find out they were going to support bills that the administration wanted pushed through when other big oil companies would not. So you begin to understand. They felt bullet proof. They felt like they had such good friends in the administration and in the majority that certainly nobody would ever throw them under the bus. Well, guess what? When the public heat got hot enough, they got thrown under the bus. And how did we deal with it today? We passed a bill through committee to appropriate $900 million a year for the next 30 years to buy more Federal land. I haven't figured out how that solves the problem in the gulf. And, in fact, it creates a worse problem because, as we've already seen from this administration, they do not like to lease land for drilling. And, in fact, in the prior administration, 7 years before this administration took office, a leasing process was begun to lease land in the Utah, Wyoming, Colorado area. And it took 7 years to get to the point that companies would be in a position to make a knowing bid, and the bid could be chosen, the high bid, for the lease. Those leases, after that 7 years, were let at the end of 2008. Immediately, Secretary Salazar came in and ordered that the checks not be cashed and then ordered that they be returned, that he was not going to allow the leases that took 7 years to come into being to exist because they were done at, in his words, the midnight hour. For 7 years, he calls it the midnight hour, as the Bush administration left. So there went one source of oil that was going to help eliminate the need for deepwater drilling, and we've seen that happening over and over. Last year, as I understand, the second most rich deposit of uranium was declared off limits. It came through our committee. That was a bill we voted out to put our second best source of uranium off limits, and that all at a time when we're trying to figure out ways how to get off carbon-based fuels, and nuclear should be one of those ways that we utilize, especially when you find out, as we have in our committee, that 90 percent of our uranium we're using in our nuclear plants right now is imported, and yet we have uranium that could be used for that. God has so richly blessed this country with resources, when you take them all into consideration, like no nation in the world. When you look at all the natural resources that would produce energy, nobody comes close to this little country where we've had until more recently an experiment, as the Founders called it, in a democratic Republic, in an elected representative government. We appropriated $900 million a year for the next 30 years to buy land to put more of it off limits. You know, we heard when gasoline went to $4 a gallon that actually there is land about 500 square miles in this country where within a 500-square-mile area, from the thicker tar sands, if oil is $80 a barrel, they can do it and be able to make money, produce maybe 1 trillion barrels of oil. We've also heard in the entire Middle East there may only be 1 to 3 trillion barrels of oil; and yet, since then, we've heard there may be 3 to 5 trillion barrels of oil in that same area, as long as oil is $80 a barrel or higher. When you start realizing that, you go Why are we not like 90 percent effective in providing all our own energy? Why do we continue to fund people that hate us like Chavez and countries in the Middle East who are harboring terrorists and in which terrorists are farm fed and farm grown. I mentioned yesterday here on the floor about Yemen. I just wonder how many New Englanders, how many people who live in Boston know that this year for the first time they've gotten rid of their contract for liquid natural gas, liquefied natural gas from areas that are very friendly to us, some in the Caribbean. That's been done away with, and now the contract for the next 20 years is with Yemen. Now, I know they're nice folks. I've met some nice folks from Yemen, but they also happen to harbor terrorists; and when people from Guantanamo were released to Yemen, they ended up getting away and those terrorists are at large, maybe back here in the United States now. Another thing, of course, that occurred today, in addition to this massive appropriation that came out of committee, we find out the Senate has voted to send the so-called financial reform bill to the President for signature to come into law. Breaks my heart. Now, there's some things in there that are good reform rules and changes that needed to be done, but there are also poison pills in that bill. For example, the systemic risk council in which we have some Federal, unelected, unconfirmed by anybody in Congress bureaucrats who are going to decide what businesses they deem to be a systemic risk and, therefore, businesses that the Federal Government will never let fail. What happened to America? We used to be the land of the free. When the government gets to pick and choose, we're going to let your business be the one that lives because nobody can compete effectively with a business that can run in the red because they know the government will not let them fail because other businesses can't run in the red. They have to declare bankruptcy. So what used to be the land of the free has become the land of the government's hand-picked winners and hand-picked losers. We're not going to allow the opportunity to sink or swim as God as given us, as we've been endowed with by our Creator, because our government has now come to the point where it's decided we're not going to let you decide who wins by how hard you work and how smart you work; we are going to pick winners and losers with our systemic risk council. There are things in there, once again, they're going to cripple community banks who have suffered enough because of the greed, in some cases avarice, displayed in some of the investment banks. It nearly brought the finances to a standstill. Community banks have just been lumped in with them, and they've been hurt by the regulators and it is tragic. So much for the financial deform bill because it deforms the market that used to exist, and this government has gotten so busy picking winners and losers and meddling and telling car makers what kind of cars to make and exactly what they've got to do to make them, how to make them, what they can do to make them, and how they got to be when they're finished. We've gotten so busy into the minutia of things that we shouldn't be involved in that the government--we haven't done our jobs, because if we had there would never have been somebody that was able to bilk people out of $50 billion of their life savings so they could squander it on himself. There were plenty of red flags that went up, but we were too busy as a government meddling to actually do the job to make sure everyone has a level playing field, everybody has an opportunity and people are playing fair, and when they're not playing fairly we punish them. That's what government is supposed to do; and if as the Founders you look at Romans 13:1-4, you see that as the Founders believed, government's ordained by God. And if you believe as philosophers have pointed out that a democracy ensures that a people are governed no better than they deserve, then you see that we get what we deserve. So for generations they have been deserving of more opportunity than the last generation before them, and now we come to a place where 70 percent of adults in America when polled say they don't believe their children will have as good a life, as good opportunities as they've had. That has never been the case in American history that a majority of Americans would say that. We've lost our way. But if you're concerned about the detainees in Guantanamo, there's good news. We've been releasing detainees. And this is a report from this year: it's believed that roughly 20 percent of the 560 detainees released from Guantanamo are back on the terror front lines. Interesting, huh? But I really like this story about Abdullah Massoud. He came to Guantanamo, as the House panel was told previously, he came to us without one leg from about the knee down, and we fitted him with a prosthetic leg before he left while he was in U.S. custody. So the leg, this report indicates, the artificial limb cost American taxpayers between $50,000 and $75,000. But it was nowhere to be found after Massoud had directed a homicide attack that killed 31 people, and then two months later blew himself up to avoid capture. Now, that was in 2005 that he had been released and did that, so you would think that a smart administration would come in and learn from mistakes of prior administrations. We heard friends across the aisle over here say over and over, you got to stop deficit spending, and our friends across the aisle won the majority in 2006 for that very reason. Republicans were deficit spending. Now by a margin of about 8 to 1 or 10 to 1 that has been increased in deficit spending for one year. Extraordinary. Well, then we get back to the issue of morality, because this is what it all comes back to. As Chuck Colson said previously, when you demand the morals of Woodstock, you are going to have to expect some Columbines. Think about it. When the morality that is demanded by those in charge is one that says if it feels good, do it, then somewhere you are going to have some nut that thinks it might be interesting to find out how it feels to kill people. It might feel good, so let's do it. You can't demand the morality of Woodstock and not expect some terrible tragedies to be wrought from that. That can also be pointed in the direction of the loss of life of the unborn. We used to talk in terms of over 40 million abortions. Now we are talking about over 50 million abortions. So we have got to get back to a morality that recognizes there is something more important than ourselves, and it is not the government. It is that we have been endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and unless we are willing to fight for our endowment, to fight for our inheritance, then, as so many generations, so many countries before us, we lose that for which so many paid the ultimate price. We have an obligation as a government to protect those who have entrusted us with this responsibility. When I was a judge, one of the jobs was to qualify people for jury duty for anything from significant civil cases to capital murder cases. There were some disqualifications listed in statute, and many times, thank goodness, not that often, but over my 10 years I would have people come in and say, I won't be able to be qualified to be on a jury because I am a Christian, and I am not supposed to judge lest I be judged, and I am supposed to turn the other cheek. What they didn't understand is, and I never sought to use my position to force my beliefs on someone else, but if they would read their scripture more carefully, they would find out as individuals, we are to forgive and turn the other cheek, but the government is given the responsibility that no individual has. As Romans talks about, God has given the sword, and the government is his minister to punish evil. And if you do evil, be afraid, because that sword is not given in vain. You have to understand our history, and that is where maybe we begin to fall down, when people didn't learn our history, and they didn't find out that the Founders were so excited, 1775, 1776, especially around the time of the Declaration, July 4, 1776, because they said we have within our grasp something that philosophers have only dreamed about. We have the chance to govern ourselves. In England they had a parliament, but the king could throw them out at any time, and did. This was going to be a nation for the first time not like Rome, where there was a Caesar, but where people would govern themselves. And that sword would be given not to a Caesar, not to a king, not to a duke, but to the people, we the people. So a method of government was set up such that the people as the government would hire servants to come in and do what they hired them to do, and if they didn't do what they were hired to do and said they would do, were told to do, then they could be fired and replaced by other servants, public servants, to do what the government, the people, we the people, said must be done. So when citizens of this country, these United States, are called for jury duty and they refuse to serve and they try to do so on the basis of saying, well, I am a Christian, then they have rejected Romans, they have rejected teaching in both the Old and New Testament, they have rejected the sword, the power that was ordained and put in their hand, and said I am not going to do my job. I reject the power that God has placed at my disposal to protect my country. And when people don't go out and vote, it is the same thing. They are rejecting the power that was put in their hand to govern this country. And when they don't support good candidates, they are rejecting the power that was put in their hands to hire their own servants to carry out their will. And when they don't run for office when they feel that calling to do so, the same thing. They can't say they are an obedient Christian, the way I read scripture and the way so many before us in the founding of this country read it, if they are willing to walk away from that power that is put in their hand to govern this country by hiring servants and firing servants when they don't do their jobs. Now, I have been told by my staff, you have to be careful talking about those things, because you have an election every 2 years. Somebody could come in and say, okay, I am using your words against you. The people have the right to hire and fire, and so I am saying it is time to fire you. Well, I am not afraid of that, because I believe I am doing what my district hired me to do. I serve at their pleasure and at their will, and if they say I am not doing the proper job because I believe in this little experiment in elected representative government, this incredible gift that this Nation was given so long ago and has fought to keep ever since, I believe in it to the point where, yes, it will hurt to be defeated, it will hurt your pride. But I can also say thank the Lord, I know there is something else for me to do. The people, for good, for bad, in a democracy, get the government they deserve. And I think it is too important that people understand that to worry about somebody using my own words against me. Come on and use them, and I will run on my record. Speaking of the record, we were talking about Guantanamo and people-- detainees--that have been released. This article was incredibly good news. The headline in the New York Times said, ``Five Charged in 9/11 Attacks Seek to Plead Guilty.'' Hallelujah. What great news that is. From Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. ``The five Guantanamo detainees charged with coordinating the September 11th attacks told a military judge on Monday that they wanted to confess in full, a move that seemed to challenge the government to put them to death. That is such great news. Such great news. Unfortunately, that was on December 9, 2008. December 9, 2008, the five people alive still most responsible for the killing--the wanton, lustful, murderous killing--of over 3,000 people in New York City and in the Pentagon were ready to plead guilty, and this administration came in and snatched defeat for justice from the jaws of victory. It just seems like somebody owes an apology to the victims' families from 9/11 for taking a victory and justice being done and throwing it away, costing millions--some project hundreds of millions, maybe billions--to try these terrorists who, 2 years ago, were ready to plead guilty, and now, with the encouragement of this administration, are ready to play games. Very tragic. As the last minutes come to an end for this session of Congress, for today, which will be the last for this week, I want to close as I try to normally do by pointing to some history so that, Mr. Speaker, people will understand where we came from. There is no way to really chart a good path of where you're going in the future unless you honestly know where you've been without it being a deception. There are those who continue to say that George Washington was not a religious man, that he was a deist, didn't really believe in religion, didn't practice religion; and those are great lies. Anyone can go read the huge book George Washington's Sacred Fire written by the same guy that wrote this, Peter Lillback, over in Philadelphia. Here is a letter, text written by the moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, Rev. John Rodgers, in his correspondence with Washington during the war about giving away Bibles to the American troops. The Presbyterians as a group wrote: ``We adore Almighty God, the author of every perfect gift, who hath endued you''--talking about George Washington--``with such a rare and happy assemblage of talents as hath rendered you equally necessary to your country in war and in peace; the influence of your personal character moderates the divisions of political parties.'' He had such integrity and character that it moderated through all the squabbles between the parties. They say on further: ``A steady, uniform, avowed friend of the Christian religion, who has commenced his administration in rational and exalted sentiments of piety, and who in his private conduct adorns the doctrines of the Gospel of Christ.'' That's not a deist. But, anyway, the letter says Washington ``adorns the doctrines of the Gospel of Christ, and on the most public and solemn occasions devoutly acknowledges the government of divine Providence.'' That's where we came from. They recognized his character. I read yesterday where Washington's own order said that there could be no higher compliment to the soldiers than that they put on Christian qualities, the qualities of a Christian. In June of 1985 in a decision, Wallace v. Jaffree, unfortunately it was in dissent, but William Rehnquist pointed out the deception that was being talked about by Lillback in the Wall of Misconception, and these are Rehnquist's words: ``The wall of separation between church and state is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.'' And in the Supreme Court decision, Lynch v. Donnelly, the decision itself actually said: ``The Constitution does not require complete separation of church and state. It affirmatively mandates accommodation, not mere tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.'' And yet we find today as we dealt with hate crime issues, the only group which it is becoming lawful and unfortunate to show prejudice against are Christians. The same people our Founders kept talking about. Patrick Henry correctly warned future Americans the following: ``Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of infidels or idolators should be a nation of free men. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains.'' John Adams wrote, August 28, 1811: ``Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not only of republicanism''--and that doesn't mean our Republican Party at all; it means the system where we have elected Representatives--``they are the foundations not only of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all governments and in all the combinations of human society.'' This is just so important that people understand these things. Harry Truman stated this: ``The fundamental basis of this nation's laws was given to Moses on the Mount.'' And isn't it ironic, when this Hall of Representatives was built and decorated, above every door up in the gallery is a profile of all of those that our predecessors believed were the greatest lawgivers of all time. The greatest. Hammurabi. Some say, why is Napoleon up there? The Napoleonic Code. The Justinian Code, of course. But in the middle is the only face that's not a side profile and that is because he was considered to be the greatest lawgiver of all time. As it says under his face, Moses. That's the Moses Truman was talking about. Truman goes on: ``The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that enough these days. If we don't have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.'' John F. Kennedy said, ``The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.'' Supreme Court Justice Douglas remarked, ``We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.'' James Madison said in November of 1825: ``The belief in a God all powerful, wise and good is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities to be impressed with it.'' Our history is so full of such incredible quotes. But those words that are carved into the Jefferson Memorial, so powerful, are these: ``God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a Nation be thought secure when we have removed from their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.'' That's why we begin every session every day in this Congress with prayer led by a minister from that podium, going back to the unanimous motion by Benjamin Franklin, that unless the Lord build a house, they labor in vain that build it. If we have the morals of Woodstock, we can expect more tragedies. We can expect more greed and more avarice, more lawlessness, and more rights to be usurped by the servants that were elected and selected and hired. And we owe the future generations so much better than that. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it is always an honor and privilege to speak on the floor of the House of Representatives where so much history has been made. There are a number of things we need to cover. I had some interesting things going on in the Natural Resources Committee today because we are taking up legislation as a result of the oil spill. Those pesky words keep resurfacing, ``never let a crisis go to waste,'' and it appears that is what is happening here. We had 11 people lose their lives in the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Many thousands may lose their livelihood. We know that it is the worst environmental accident we have had in the United States. It has been amazing that so little had been done to try to assist from the Federal Government. Eventually the Coast Guard came on board, but three days after this terrible accident, it is nations like the Netherlands that have extraordinary expertise in building barrier islands, in actually taking in water and separating out the oil, people that had all these wonderful inventions and ideas and things that would help capture the oil, should have all been utilized because so many of them have merit, and yet the Coast Guard kept turning them away. Kevin Costner had spent $10 million of his own money to see this thing developed that would separate oil and water and do so in large numbers, but didn't get a lot of attention. So I know there were a lot of pressing things to do. There were golf courses to be played, there were things that had to be done, parties that had to be attended. All the while the oil kept coming up and the environment kept suffering, wildlife kept suffering. And then when we eventually find out, well, actually there was a reason. British Petroleum thought they were bulletproof. They thought they could have more safety violations, hundreds of times more safety violations than other oil companies drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and be immune from having the administration come down on it. It is understandable now, once we got into it. They were supportive of the administration's crap-and-trade bill. In fact, as the Deepwater Horizon rig was sinking, Senator Kerry down the hall was making negotiations making sure BP was still on board with the crap-and-trade bill. The White House counted them as being supportive of the bill. And they, of course, have so many lobbyists. Their best lobbyists are all from Democratic administrations. They felt like they were bulletproof. So then it begins to explain why it took so long to finally get on to BP and fuss at them, because America had had enough. They had seen the kind of poor safety record BP had. So BP got thrown under the bus, much to their apparent surprise, after all their support. They've given heavily to the President's campaign. So I'm sure they were surprised when they ultimately were thrown under the bus. But as a result of that terrible tragedy there are some laws that are being voted out of committee. We had debate on them for several hours today. And that's as it should be. A bill shouldn't come to the floor that is so sweeping unless it goes through proper committee channels. Didn't go through subcommittee, but we had a long hearing on it today. And it will be voted on in the morning. All the votes were rolled so that they'll take place in the morning. It's just hard to believe that out of a crisis like the gulf oil spill, that people would take advantage of that and want to pork up the bill. Shocking. Shocking. One of the things that economists have proposed across the country that would help get us on track is that--financially, that is, on track--is that is we have got to get out of the mentality of constantly buying more and more and more and more land. The Federal Government seems to want to take over the country, or at least those States that often vote heavily Republican. The colleagues across the aisle want to buy more and more of the land. So I had a chart here of what the West looks like, the Western part of the United States, how much of it we have in red that is owned by the United States. That is, by the United States Government. So you get an idea. Here is the Western United States. The red parts are those that are owned by our Federal Government. And the Federal Government wants more. We have had information on the amount of money that our Federal Government has been spending in the past on buying land, and it's been rather shocking to see the numbers. Here we have the amount of money that was allocated in 2008 for the Federal Government to spend on buying more land in the United States for the Federal Government to take over. It's important to understand that when the Federal Government takes over land, it means the schools in that vicinity, the local governments in that vicinity get nothing. Because all of the land, when the Federal Government takes it, is removed from the tax rolls. It cannot be taxed. Schools, cities, counties, States cannot tax the Federal Government once it takes over the land. So it makes sense that you want to be cautious in having the Federal Government take over more and more land in this country. In fact, that's what economists have said. You have got to get out of the mentality of continuing to buy land. Start selling some. Let's get on track to get rid of our deficit. Quit buying land. And it turns out that right now we're $3.7 billion behind in the projects that are needed to keep up the existing Federal land and Federal parks that we have right now. Our parks are going to squalor in many places. Places that people used to love to visit are just being let go because the money is not there to take care of it. Why? Because we keep spending money on buying more and more land and locking that land up so it cannot be used for any purpose. That's one of the problems we've got down with the border between Arizona--a U.S. border--and Mexico. Thirty-two miles of that border are wilderness, national park, which means the Border Patrol are the only ones that can't take--or U.S. Federal agents are the only ones that can't take vehicles in there. It's against the law. They commit a crime if they do that. But it doesn't stop the drug smugglers, the illegal alien smugglers from taking vehicles across there. And so that's what happens. They can have mechanical instruments. But even if you need to bring a helicopter in to lift out somebody that's been shot, like a Border Patrol Agent, which has happened, the helicopter can't land. Illegal aliens, drug smugglers, they can drive right by them, but our Border Patrol cannot go in there because it's a national park wilderness area. That's why I've got a bill to try to do something about that, but apparently it's not going to see the light of day. So here we have in 2008, the last year of the Bush Presidency. But since all appropriations originate in the House of Representatives, no matter what the President wants to do, it originates here, and if you check back in 2004, 2005, 2006, it was a fraction of a hundred million dollars. Well, in 2008 it was a little over a hundred million dollars. In 2009, it was still about $150 million or so, according to the chart. And then in 2010, this year, from last year's appropriation, it shot up to nearly $300 million. And for next year it's already--what is being laid out for next year's land acquisitions is nearly $400 million. So here we are, in the worst budget crunch we have ever had, and what happens? For the first time since 1974, Congress is not going to have a budget. Apparently, it was considered too politically difficult for people to come in and vote for a budget that would expand costs as apparently the desire is to have done. So here you have a tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, still ongoing. Hopefully, the cap is going to hold. But that remains to be seen. There's still so much damage. And since we're dealing with a time when those in control do not want to let a good crisis go to waste without taking advantage of it, in the legislation that we debated today and that will apparently pass in the morning around 9:15, we're going to stick in $900 million for land acquisition. That's in the committee, July, 2010. That's what is apparently going to happen because the majority will have the votes. They're going to appropriate in an authorization bill $9 million to buy more land, as if our parks are not in enough trouble because all of this money keeps going for more and more land acquisition. We're going to not cut spending on land acquisition and just even have a moratorium just for a little while. Let this country catch its breath. We're looking at a $1.5 trillion deficit for 1 year. My first year here, I kept hearing people across the aisle talking about how $100 billion, $200 billion was an outrage for a deficit in 1 year. And, you know what? They were right. There shouldn't have been $100 billion and $200 billion deficit for 1 year. And that's why people voted them into the majority in November 2006. Yet here we go this year. The same people have no problem with a $1.5 trillion deficit in 1 year because of all the jobs that it apparently, they think, is creating. Well, it did. For June, 431,000 jobs were created. Unfortunately, 411,000 of them were temporary census jobs. So here's our chart. This is what will pass tomorrow because me and my friends simply do not have enough votes to keep it from passing. They're going to pork up this bill to deal with the gulf oil crisis by sticking $900 million of pork in there to buy more land for the Federal Government to own, to put local governments, local schools, State governments in a difficult situation because they'll never be able to generate any tax dollars or revenue from that land once the Federal Government takes it over. And so with that in mind, we look back at the chart again, the map, that shows the western part of the United States with that in red, representing areas that the Federal Government already owns. But apparently to those in charge right now, it's not enough. It's not enough to own nearly all of Nevada. It's not enough to own 70 percent of Utah. It's not enough to own most of Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming. So tomorrow, $900 million will be appropriated in this bill about the gulf oil crisis to buy more Federal land that will hurt more local governments and more local schools. It's just hard to fathom. It is hard to believe that this is going to happen tomorrow, but we simply do not have enough votes in our minority to keep that kind of pork from being added to a bill emanating from a crisis. You know, we've already heard from people, families of victims who were killed on Deepwater Horizon, out begging, Please do not have a moratorium, because they knew their friends would be out of work, other family members would be out of work. I don't have a problem if you want to shut down every one of BP's offshore rigs until we can be sure that they are safe. But when, as we heard in the hearing today, BP had had 800 safety violations to, in some cases, none for other oil companies in the same period, one for other oil companies in the same period, they had 800, so what did this administration do? They gave them an award for safety. That's right. They didn't fine them. They gave them an award for safety. But when you understand they were embracing a tax, a gas tax, they were embracing so many of the bills this administration was pushing forward that most in the country didn't support, they didn't want to lose their good friend BP, and that's why it took them so long to throw them under the bus. Well, that's one area in which we're throwing away a lot of money. It's pretty amazing, pretty outrageous. Another area is in our foreign assistance programs. Now, this is my third term here. In each of my three terms, I have filed a bill. This is no exception. It's H.R. 4636. I have now filed for a discharge petition. So hopefully we can get enough folks that will sign on to the discharge petition to force this bill to the floor for an up-or-down vote, because we haven't been able to get one. This is a very simple bill. In essence, it says--well, it's entitled the United Nations Voting Accountability Act. It is very simple. Any nation that votes against the United States' position more than half the time on contested votes in the United Nations will receive no Federal assistance from our government to theirs. Very simple. And as I have said before, you don't want to have to pay people to hate you. They'll do it for free. Why pay them to hate you when they'll do it for free? So we pulled the report for this year--because each year a report comes out; it has to come out by March 31 of each year--of all of the votes, the contested votes from the year before so that we could get some idea of who is voting with us, how often, who we're paying to hate us. For example, in 2008, there was $105 million given to Bangladesh. They voted against the U.S. position 82.4 percent of the time in 2008 and 80 percent of the time in 2009. We gave millions to Belarus, a former state in the Soviet Union, and they voted against us in 2008 84.6 percent of the time, and this past year voted 75 percent of the time against the U.S. interests and position. You've got Bolivia down in South America. We've given them over $100 million. That was in 2008. As I understand, it was a great deal more than that in 2009. They were our great ally and were only voting against us 85.2 percent of the time in 2008. And it got a little better in 2009. Only 70 percent of the time they voted against the country that provided them over $100 million in aid. We're paying them to hate us. Brazil. Of course we've heard recently about the $2 billion that we're loaning to Brazil to develop their deepwater territories, their deepwater offshore drilling program. And lo and behold, it turns out apparently George Soros' biggest personal investment is in a company that does that drilling, so we provided $2 billion to help our dear friend George Soros make that much more money from his biggest investment, personally. And so Brazil, we loaned them millions--I'm sorry. We loaned them billions, give them millions, and they voted against us in 2008 70.7 percent of the time and against us last year in 2009 62.5 percent of the time. You've got Cambodia, where lots of Americans lost their lives fighting for freedom for the people. We let them out from under all the murderous regimes that have followed. But with tens of millions of dollars, they voted against us 84 percent of the time in 2008 and 62.5 percent of the time in 2009. We are still just pouring money into them. Now, I have been talking to them about this ever since I came on into Congress in 2005, and it makes me think that maybe we're doing some good, because of all the hundreds of millions we've given to Colombia, in 2008, they voted against the U.S. position 80 percent of the time. Last year, it was 40 percent of the time. So they would not be adversely affected by this bill because they have found their way clear to support us. Most people think with the embargo sanctions against Cuba, that's taken care of. Not true. In 2008 alone, we gave $45 million in aid to Cuba when they voted against us in the U.N. 87.8 percent of the time. And in 2009, they got even higher, up to 90 percent of the time. Now, the Republic of the Congo in 2008 got $103 million, $104 million, and for some reason, that same year they only voted against us 7 percent of the time. This year, I was under the impression they got even more money, but they voted against us 71 percent of the time. So from 7 percent to a 71.5 percent turnaround there. You've got Dominican Republic. Give them tens of millions of dollars. They voted against us 80.5 percent of the time in '08, 60 percent of the time in '09. Egypt gets a couple of billion dollars, in essence, but they voted against us in the U.N. against our position 93.3 percent of the time in '08, and in '09, 81.8 percent of the time. Got Ethiopia. We gave $455 million in '08. They voted against us to show their gratitude 82.9 percent of the time in the U.N. in '08, and 83.3 percent in '09. Again, you don't have to pay people to hate you. They'll do it for free. India, $99 million that we gave away as Federal assistance to India in 2008. They voted against us 76.3 percent of the time. That number, I think, may have risen and now so has their opposition to anything we hold dear. They're now up to 88.9 percent of the time in 2009, voting against us. India is benefiting from our high corporate taxes. They're benefiting from the threat of the crap-and-trade bill passing. They're benefiting from the health care bill that just got passed because employers, big manufacturers are saying, we've got to go where the country doesn't hate us being there so much. We're going to India, we're going to China, we're going to South America. So a lot of these countries we're pouring money into that we don't have, that we're having to borrow from China, all the while they're opposing us every step of the way. You've got Indonesia, 189, basically $190 million simply in foreign aid, not counting the other benefits we've given them. And yet they opposed us 84.9 percent of the time in the U.N. in '08, and 80 percent of the time in '09. Pouring money into these countries that we don't have, that we're having to borrow, while people are out of work, hurting, searching for jobs, hoping for the economy to turn around, and something besides temporary census jobs to become available, and this is what they find out. Jordan, in 2008 got $687 million, simply in aid, and they voted against us 91.7 percent of the time in '08 and 60 percent of the time in '09. Now, Mexico, this shows $50 million in foreign aid in '08. But also, of course, we had, I believe, $500 million that we provided them to assist them in their defense effort. And as a result, we have the President of Mexico come in here and chastise us for having immigration laws that he says promote racism; laws like that passed in Arizona that simply are begging to have our laws enforced. Well, Mexico voted against us 75.9 percent of the time in '08. But in '09 that dropped to 36.4 percent of the time, so apparently we're buying some love and affection there. Nicaragua, they've got tens of millions of dollars each year, yet they voted against us in '08, 84.7 percent of the time, and against our positions 80 percent of the time in '09. You've got Nigeria, $486 million they received in 2008, simply in foreign aid, not counting other types of aid; '08 they voted against us that same year 82.7 percent of the time in the U.N., and against our position 63.6 percent of the time in 2009. Pakistan, that we keep hoping is going to make a turn for the better, well, in 2008, simply in foreign aid, we gave them $737 million. They voted against our position 81.1 percent of the time in '08; 87.5 percent of the time in '09. Got the Philippines. They wanted to be completely shed of the United States, didn't want anything to do with us. Well, almost nothing to do with us. They did want our hundred-plus million dollars that we will give them, as we did in 2008, while they voted against our position in the U.N. 81.2 percent of the time in '08; 62.5 percent of the time in '09. Philippines have people there, many of whom are very dear to the United States. But as a separate independent nation, they're free to make their own decisions, love us or hate us. But we shouldn't have to pay people to hate us when they're willing to do it for free. Russia, hard to believe, but we gave them $81 million in foreign aid in 2008, and they voted against us 82.9 percent of the time in '08. Did a little better, 66.7 percent of the time they were against our position in '09. South Africa, $574 million in '08 we gave, only in foreign aid, not counting other types of aid. They voted against us, our positions, 84.5 percent of the time in 2008, and against our position 66.7 percent of the time in 2009. Sudan, gave them $337 million in 2008, they voted against us to show their gratitude 91.9 percent of the time in 2008, and a clear 90 percent of the time in 2009. You've got Uganda. We gave them $350 million, simply in foreign aid, not counting all the other types of assistance in 2008. They showed their gratitude by voting against our position 82.3 percent of the time in '08; 62.5 percent in '09. Venezuela. I bet most people didn't know we were giving Venezuela foreign aid, but we did. This majority voted to give them around $10 million in 2008. Regardless who is in the White House, the Congress is the one that votes appropriations. Venezuela got basically $10 million, simply in foreign aid, and of course they showed their love and affection for the United States by voting against us in opposition, 86.1 percent of the time in '08 and 81.8 percent of the time in '09. You've got Vietnam. Vietnam, we've gotten so friendly with, they got over $100 million of U.S. taxpayer money. Actually, I'm sure it's borrowed money from China that our grandchildren will pay the interest on, and pay the principal as well, unless they have to declare bankruptcy as a nation because of our gluttony. But Vietnam, we gave away over $100 million to them, and their gratitude was expressed by voting against the things we believe in 94.5 percent of the time in '08, and 75 percent of the time in '09. Yemen. Yemen. Now, this was just giveaway money here. It's $16 million, $17 million just as foreign aid to Yemen in 2008. Showed their appreciation by voting against our position 92.8 percent of the time in 2008, 71.4 percent in 2009. But Yemen, not only did they get millions and millions of dollars simply in foreign aid from the United States, New England gave them a real boon. New England, just found out in the last few weeks, this year New England gave them a contract to provide liquid natural gas for the next 20 years to Yemen. Now, in order for Yemen to get that contract we had to snub our nose at countries who have been very supportive and have been friends, including some in the Caribbean. We snubbed our nose at our friends, and New England gives what will result in incredible amounts of money to Yemen for liquid natural gas. At the same time, we were having hearings, been having hearings in the Natural Resources Committee to try to hamper hydraulic fracking. By the use of hydraulic fracking, we have been able to secure over 100 years' reserves of natural gas that we could be using, our own natural gas. Dan Boren across the aisle has a wonderful bill that would encourage making cars that run on natural gas more widespread, more easy to get, and trying to move some of our country over to natural gas vehicles because we have so much of it. Of course if we eliminate hydraulic fracking, which by the way has never been shown to have polluted drinking water--we have had hearings on that--there is no need for the Federal Government to get in and try to oppose hydraulic fracking. Many States that have it regulate it themselves, and they have done a good job in controlling that, and will continue for the future. As one of the Members of Congress from Louisiana said today, if you were to eliminate hydraulic fracking, you would do more damage to Louisiana and its economy and people's livelihoods than this environmental disaster will do. Yet Yemen got this massive contract to provide liquefied natural gas to New England. That means big, huge ships carrying massive amounts of liquefied natural gas. In other words, a rather large bomb will be floating in routinely to Boston Harbor. And I found a quote from the Coast Guard where they indicate, gee, one of their biggest concerns, since Yemen has proved to be home of so many terrorists that want to destroy our way of life, one of their biggest jobs is going to try to make sure there is not one stowaway somewhere on that Yemen tanker that may set the thing off and wipe out much of Boston in the process. I wonder if the people of Boston knew that that was going on, that not only were we giving away so many millions to Yemen--of course, some may remember that just recently people were allowed to leave Guantanamo Bay, went to Yemen, and Yemen of course ended up seeing them take off and we don't know where they are anymore. Heck, they may be back here coming across our Mexican border, since we haven't secured that. So, going back to my bill, 4636, I am going to keep bringing it up, and we will have a discharge petition and give people on both sides of the aisle an opportunity to sign that and bring that to the floor for a vote. That will end up cutting off foreign aid to countries that so strongly oppose the things that we hold dear, the things for which we have sacrificed, in John Adams' words, toil and blood and treasure to secure. And yet we just keep giving money to those who are opposing us in almost every turn. They are sovereign nations. We shouldn't get into nation building. They are big folks. They can make their own decisions. But if they want to oppose us at every turn, they can't expect us to continue to pay them to oppose us at every turn. Are so it just is hard to believe that that's something we are still dealing with, but it is. And I have to mention this. Regarding the gulf oil spill and this legislative markup, as it's called; it's of course voting a bill out of committee. It's the emergency response to the gulf oil bill that includes $900 million a year for the next 30, 40 years simply to buy more land. Think about the James Bond title ``The World Is Not Enough.'' Well, owning most of the West doesn't seem to be enough. My friend Rob Bishop from Utah indicated how about a friendly amendment to just say the Federal Government will only buy land in States in which the Federal Government does not already own up to 20 percent of the State? But my friends across the aisle from those States in the East that love continuing to purchase land in the West, forcing schools to lay off teachers, shut down schools, inability to provide tax revenue--they love that because they're not going to have land bought in their States. The friendly amendment that Mr. Bishop offered, since the Federal Government already owns 70 percent of his State, was not accepted. So the intent appears clear: They want to keep buying more land in the West. They don't want it purchased up in the East for the most part. So in addition to that, during the hearings regarding the gulf crisis, when I was questioning Director Birnbaum, brought out the facts that we learned that there was only one entity, one group within MMS, Minerals Management Service, that was allowed to unionize, and that was the offshore inspectors. The offshore inspectors, the people that stand between disaster and our beloved homeland. And they are unionized. So I offered a simple amendment today, because those offshore inspectors that go out to make sure things are done properly to protect us from disaster on our homeland, they are like people in the Army. You know, I never went into warfare. I was commissioned based on an Army scholarship I had at Texas A&M. I had an Army scholarship there. I owed the Army 4 years, but I wasn't commissioned until a year after Vietnam. When I took the scholarship, I anticipated I would end up in Vietnam, but the war ended. And we were taught, though, in training--and I had been a sentry before, put out on a perimeter to sit guard during the night. And I was out there to stand guard to make sure nothing happened to my friends who were getting some sleep at night. I was their protection. So I wasn't about to fall asleep when as dark as it was out on perimeter because I had to warn them if someone was coming in. And sure, you know, it was drills, it was practice if some want to call it that. But during drills you take it very seriously. But I came to appreciate the role of someone who is a forward observer, someone who is a sentry, someone who is out there on the perimeter sitting, standing guard to make sure that they are protected back in the main group. Well, that's the way the role of an offshore inspector struck me. They are out there protecting us. Can you imagine someone on guard duty out protecting your perimeter calling in and saying, guess what, I am going on strike? I don't like my contract. I'm going on strike. So you're no longer protected out here. Things could go completely awry. I'm not inspecting. I'm on strike. That should not be allowed to happen in the military. It shouldn't be allowed to happen on offshore rigs. So I had a simple amendment that said offshore inspectors are not allowed to strike or threaten to strike from doing their jobs. Votes were rolled. So we will have a recorded vote on that in the morning and we'll find out how serious people on both sides of the aisle are about protecting our homeland, or are they going to have to kowtow and cater to unions as we've seen on so many votes. This, we're talking about our homeland. We're talking about prevention of environmental disaster. So, Madam Speaker, I hope that people will let their Members of Congress know that are on the Natural Resources Committee, Don't vote for the unions; vote for the homeland. Don't vote to allow our soldiers, our offshore inspectors out there on our shore, on our offshore rigs, to go on strike because, wow, what leverage. It would be like an air traffic controller saying, All of those planes are in the air, and I don't care if they land or crash. We're walking away. They're on their own. You can't let them do that. You have to provide for our country's security. You can't let people in the position with the leverage over lives and livelihoods to walk away on strike at the worst possible time. So we'll find out tomorrow who's voting for our Nation's homeland, our homeland, all we love and hold dear--the environment, the animals, the plants that can't do anything about the oil coming ashore. We'll see whether the vote will be for the unions so that offshore inspectors can continue to have the threat to strike if they so feel like it or not. That's tomorrow. One other thing I want to get to, because I know our President said this year that we're not a Christian nation, and I want to debate that because I don't know if we are or not anymore. But I know how we got started, and it's easy to see in the writings, the things that were said, the proclamations. It's easy to see. For example, George Washington, May 2, 1778, gave this order to his troops, May 2, 1778, to the troops at Valley Forge. Here it is, and I'm quoting from George Washington's order. ``The Commander-in-Chief directs that Divine service be performed every Sunday at 11 o'clock, in each Brigade which has a Chaplain. Those Brigades which have none will attend the places of worship nearest to them. It is expected that officers of all ranks will, by their attendance, set an example for their men. While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to laud the more distinguished Character of,'' and this is Washington's words, ``Christian.'' That was his order to the Continental Army, May 2, 1778. Again, I won't debate whether or not we're a Christian nation now. But it is important that people in this body know, and people across America know, that we, at one time were--the Judiciary Committee of the Senate made that proclamation at one time in one of their votes. They said point blank, We are a Christian nation. That was in the 1800s. Abraham Lincoln, July 7, 1864, said this in his proclamation. Abraham Lincoln said, ``I do hereby further invite and request the heads of the Executive Departments of this Government, together with all legislatures, all judges and magistrates, and all other persons exercising authority in the land, whether civil, military, or naval, and all soldiers, seamen, and marines in the national service, and all of the other law-abiding people of the United States, to assemble in their preferred places of public worship on that day, and there and then to render to the Almighty and merciful Ruler of the Universe such homages and such confessions to offer to Him such supplications, as the Congress of the United States have in their aforesaid resolution so solemnly, so earnestly, and so reverently recommended.'' That was for the day July 7, 1864. September 5 of 1864, Abraham Lincoln addressed a committee, and according to the historic document of Colored People from Baltimore-- that's according to the historic document. Now, that would be African Americans, I'm sure, but back in 1864, apparently Lincoln didn't know better. So acknowledging a gift of a Bible from those wonderful people, he said, this is Lincoln's words, ``In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, I believe the Bible is the best gift God has given to man. All the good Saviour,'' that's Lincoln's words, ``All the good Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this Book. But for this Book we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.'' In the Bible. How about that. Those are Lincoln's words. You'll look at his second inaugural address. Interestingly enough, he said these words. These are carved in the north wall of the Lincoln Memorial. In the middle of his second inaugural address, he's talking about both the North and the South. He said, ``Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been fully answered. The Almighty has His own purposes.'' Then he quotes the Bible, ``Woe unto the world because of offenses.'' ``Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondsman 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, `the judgements of the Lord, are true and righteous.' '' Those were Lincoln's words in the second inaugural address. So I won't debate whether or not we're a Christian nation. But that's how we got our start. Despite the efforts of those even in the early 1800s up to the present day who disregard the facts, they disregard so many of our Founders' own words. Call Benjamin Franklin a deist, even though at 80 years of age at the Constitutional Convention he's the one that says, ``I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth--God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writing, that unless the Lord build the House, they labour in vain that build it.'' He went on to urge those other members at the Constitutional Convention--his words, not mine--he said, ``Firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel.'' So much for him being a deist. Regardless of where we are now, this Nation started as a Christian Nation. All of the indications from the official sources, from our Presidents, indicated as much. So, regardless of where we are now, that's where we started. We need to get history right if we're going to have a future.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, that's one of the great things about our system, we have a chance to speak from both sides. As I listened, I was surprised to hear I had taken so many positions that I had never taken. But let me just say that with regard to Republicans being for privatizing Social Security, that bill did not pass. It didn't even get around here to get passed because so many Republicans were not in favor of it. And, in fact, you can go back and find this Republican saying repeatedly then and still saying that what we should do is what was not done when Social Security came into existence, and that is take Social Security tax dollars and put them in a Social Security account. Now, until I got here 5\1/2\ years ago, I was under the impression that it was some kind of modern creation that Social Security tax dollars were taken away, they never even get to the Social Security Trust Fund but went to general revenue with IOUs being placed in file cabinets for the Social Security Trust Fund. But lo and behold, come to find out, Social Security tax dollars have never, ever gone into the Social Security Trust Fund, not since its inception. Now, in Texas, we have the Texas Employee Retirement System. Teachers have an employee retirement system. And those systems have done many times better than Social Security for one reason: They put dollars into the retirement fund so the fund was able to grow. And because it was able to grow, people can get several times more in the way of retirement payments from those retirement systems than you can from Social Security. In fact, when I first got here in 2005, I had my staff run a check to find out--and I gave them a hypothetical to submit to Social Security as well as to the Texas Employee Retirement System and another retirement system to find out what kind of monthly income you would receive under that hypothetical. It turned out, the best Social Security could tell us was that under the hypothetical we gave them, that the monthly income from Social Security to a deserving senior would be somewhere between $600 and $900 a month. Well, if anybody is familiar with seniors and the costs that they end up being out of pocket, you will know that $600 to $900 does not go far enough, but that's what Social Security payments would be. And as I recall the hypothetical, it was $30,000 average for 30 years before retirement, and that was the best we could get, $600 to $900. However, when that hypothetical was provided to the Texas Employee Retirement System, which puts real money into an account, it turns out the monthly payment was somewhere between $2,600 to $2,800 per month-- the same hypothetical--and the difference was that real money went into the trust fund. But President Franklin Roosevelt knew, apparently, when this began that there would not be real money going into the trust fund, and every President since then has known that. President Roosevelt, President Truman, President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, they've all known. No money that is pried out of the hands of those who earn it and those that pay those who earn it, none of that money goes into the Social Security Trust Fund, not a dime. Now, that's tragic. I was pushing that back at the time in 2005. And true, there were Republicans who did not support that, and there were lots of Democrats who didn't because, as we've seen since my friends across the aisle have had such a huge majority in recent years, they've done nothing about Social Security tax money going into the Social Security Trust Fund. They control both Houses. They could have passed a bill requiring Social Security tax money to go into the trust fund in January of 2007. Madam Speaker, I can tell you, there would have been a lot of us Republicans voting for that had they decided to bring that to the floor. If it was brought to the floor this week, next week, I would vote for it. Social Security tax money must go into the Social Security Trust Fund. But there has been a reason that they have not wanted that to go from the general revenue into the Social Security Trust Fund to shore up Social Security, and that's because there are so many other little pet projects and pet ideas that this money goes to fund. I heard my friends across the aisle talking repeatedly about how important infrastructure was. Isn't that ironic, because after President Obama was sworn in, became President, the Democratic Party had such big majorities--a majority here in the House and was veto-proof, or had a supermajority down in the Senate at the time--they didn't do anything about Social Security being shored up. They didn't do anything about infrastructure, not in the way that it was talked about. We heard so many beautiful, eloquent speeches from friends across the aisle on how this spendulus stimulus bill was going to pay for all of this wonderful infrastructure. America was led to believe that the whole $787 billion was going to end up being for infrastructure and really be good for America. Well, there was a little bait-and-switch that went on, which is easy to do. My colleague, for whom I have great respect, I heard saying that Republicans have ``hamstrung the deliberative process.'' So apparently, as best I can figure--I'm sure he's smarter than I am, but the deliberative process then, apparently, must mean that you rush in with a 2,000-page bill not once but repeatedly, say, There's no time for anybody to read this. Too many jobs are being lost every day. There's no time for this to go through committee. There's no time for amendments. There's no time for anything. People are losing their jobs as we speak. You've just got to vote for it now. Now, see, to me, just from the very practical, pragmatic growing up that I had, a deliberative process would have meant that it had time to be viewed and get some sunshine into those 2,000 pages to figure out where all this pork was going, that that would have been part of the deliberative process. But apparently, as Republicans, we hamstrung the process that they called deliberative, where you rush in with a 2,000-page bill repeatedly, say there's no time to read it, just pass it and then we'll find out what's in it. See, I wouldn't have thought that was deliberative. But apparently, since my colleague said Republicans hamstrung the deliberative process, that must be what he's talking about. So they rush in with this $787 billion stimulus bill. You could have polled Americans after it passed and the majority would have said, you know, this is going to be great for building infrastructure. We need infrastructure. Little did they know that 6, less than 7 percent of the $787 billion was ever even thought to have anything to do with infrastructure. So that's why I say a bit of a bait and switch there. America wasn't even sold on it, but the few that were thought that was going to be for infrastructure and that didn't happen. Just such a tiny, tiny bit of it. We heard our friends during the last hour talk repeatedly about small business and how the stimulus was so good for small business. What they forgot to mention, they may not be aware, but of that $787 billion, less than 1 percent was for small business. How about that? So it was all about small business and infrastructure, and yet less than 7 percent was for infrastructure and less than 1 percent geared, aimed at small business. Interesting. So is it any wonder that, with people thinking that 6, 7 percent of $787 billion will build all the infrastructure we need and less than 1 percent will help small business more than anybody else, that it hasn't had the desired effect? And I couldn't really see my colleague's chart well enough to see what the last month was where they were talking about all these private jobs being created. But forget the charts. Let's look at real numbers. And the real numbers for the month of June came out, and I don't have a big pretty chart for it, but the fact is that in the month of June there was great news and then there was really bad news. The great news was that for the month of June, 431,000 jobs were created. That is great news. The really bad news is that 411,000 of those were temporary census workers. So much for all those private sector jobs we were hearing about. I heard my colleagues talk about Republicans just want to nickel and dime the middle class. I've got an awful lot of Republican friends, and I don't remember any Republicans I know of wanting to nickel and dime the middle class. The ones I know of see people in the poorest sector of America, see people in the middle class of America and want them to do even better. But it won't happen when the government is taking over control of everything. You kill incentives. And I've mentioned this before, but it is just such a clear lesson of what happens when the government gets involved and decides it's going to be the one that creates the jobs. And it was 1973, as an exchange student for the summer to the Soviet Union, going out to a collective farm, 30 miles or so from Kiev in Ukraine, and farmers sitting in the shade when their fields looked terrible. This is in the middle of summertime. Well, anybody's worked on farms or ranches knows in the middle of the morning is when you want to be working hard because you want to try to get done before the sun gets to its hottest in the afternoon, and so you start when the sun does and you try to finish before it gets to its hottest. And here it was, the best time of the day to be working, and they were all sitting in the shade with no movement toward going to work. And so I spoke a little Russian back then and asked, when do you work in the field? And they all laughed. And one of them said, I make the same number of rubles if I'm out there or if I'm here in the shade, so I'm here. That's what the government did. It kills incentives when it decides it's going to take over the job market. And I loved hearing the discussion about big corporations, big pharmaceuticals, big oil. You know, we've heard this Wall Street, they're all the big buddies of the Republicans. And yet, if you go check, Wall Street has traditionally given 4-1 to Democrats over Republicans. That was true for Goldman Sachs. If you don't just look at the officers, but you look at their spouses and their children, then you find a 4-1 average giving to Democrats over Republicans. And the big pharmaceutical companies that were mentioned, they let greed get the better side of them in coming out in support of the ObamaCare bill. And for the short term they'll make billions, maybe hundreds of billions more than they would have without the bill. But in the long term, they've written their own death warrant. The same with AMA, AHA. They sold their souls. Short term, they'll come out good. In the long run their professions, as we know it, will be changed forever for the worst for American health care. And we're already seeing those things. I get out in my district. I've been in other parts of the country. I'm hearing the people say, you know, we've decided not to hire because this crap-and-trade bill may get passed. We've already had this health care monstrosity wrapped around our necks. We're going to have to end up having to pay more than ever. You know, the President went out there to have a big photo OP with Caterpillar, and then it turns out they were going to lose over a million, was it $100 million this year? We know jobs are being lost all over the country because of that health care bill. There was no need to push good jobs out of this country. When I hear my friends say, I couldn't believe they said the Democrats want it manufactured here and Republicans don't. That's ridiculous. I went with a bipartisan group to China 5 years ago, bipartisan because there were both Republicans and Democrats. And the ones I talked to on both sides of the aisle wanted to see jobs return to America, manufacturing jobs. And I thought that perhaps, as we talked to CEOs, the number one thing I would hear was they left the U.S. and went to China because labor was so much cheaper there. That was not the number one thing I heard. The number one thing I heard was the corporate taxes in China, 17 percent, U.S. 35 percent, plus States pop them on top of that, and local governments do as well. And so not only that, but China would cut deals with them. No income tax for 5 years, then gradually increase up to 17 percent. And one of the things I loved hearing was that the quality of the work by American workers was greatly exceeding that that could be done in China by the workers there. That was good to hear. Quality control in the U.S. was so much better. But that huge 35 to 40 percent hit that they had to take before they competed in the global economy was just too much. It was putting them under. And they could go to China, and with the dramatic cut in corporate tax, they could build state-of-the-art facilities that allowed them to have workers who were not capable of as good a quality control here, and then their state-of-the-art facility would be paid for by the time, many times before the taxes really kicked in in earnest at less than half of what they were in the United States. So if my friends across the aisle were really serious about bringing manufacturing jobs here, then the solution would be to eliminate the corporate tax. It's one of the most insidious governmental creations in this country. Insidious because everybody gets to talk about these mean, evil corporations and how we want to sock it to the corporations, when the insidious truth is no matter how much tax you lay onto the corporations, if they don't pass that onto the consumer, they don't stay in business. And that's why so many have left and gone to other countries, one of the biggest reasons why they've left and gone to other countries. Now, we've heard some are not building here for refineries or energy businesses because of this looming threat of the crap-and-trade bill. Our President in 2008 had commented that he wasn't going to--basically, he said he wasn't going to put coal power plants out of business, but he would skyrocket the cost of energy. And that's where we're headed, and so that will drive businesses out of the U.S. We've had the moratorium declared by the President that was then struck down as unconstitutional. But this administration did not want to let a little thing like the Constitution get in the way, so this week they've come back with another moratorium, basically throwing the Constitution, the judicial sector, throwing them away because just as they did with the auto task force, no confirmation from the Senate, just appointed people, and they took charge of the automobile business. They came out with a declaration as to what dealerships would close, which ones would have their property taken without due process of law. They came out with a bankruptcy plan that did not go through the requirements of bankruptcy law. They found a judge--I don't know the judge, but bankruptcy judges have to be confirmed I believe it's every 10 years. It's not a lifetime appointment. Many of them would like to be district judges. So apparently it wasn't hard to find a judge who would sign off on an illegal, unconstitutional auto task force plan, and no accountability to anybody. And once the Congress let it go without stepping in and being the check and balance on illegality and unconstitutionality, then there was only one branch left to stop such unconstitutional, illegal activity, and that was the Supreme Court. To her wonderful credit, Ruth Bader Ginsburg put a 24-hour hold on it. And apparently the administration improperly scared the Supreme Court into thinking that if they extended the hold any longer than 24 hours, all the automobile industry, all of those related to the auto industry would go under and it would all be on the Supreme Court's head. And supposedly, the Supreme Court would never let such a ridiculous thing, unconstitutional thing go through again, but they let it through then. And so we know that this administration is capable of doing end runs on the Constitution. And it looks like that's what they're doing again on the moratorium. So with the moratorium being in place, as one person in Louisiana said, we stand a chance of losing more jobs from the moratorium than we do from the oil spill. And of course beat up on Big Oil. Yet as the Deepwater Horizon rig was exploding and sinking, there were still deals being cut with this administration and this majority's dear friend British Petroleum, because they were one of the few big energy firms that were supportive of the crap-and-trade bill. So they hated to see their good friend get in trouble. They were hoping it would blow over, they would get control of this disastrous well in the gulf coast. But they didn't, and eventually the administration and majority had to throw them under the bus. Whereas, if they had been able to get control of the oil well, you would have seen a big photo op with the BP executives as they pushed through the crap-and-trade bill. So, hopefully it will not come back and get passed because it will mean so many jobs that will be lost in America. And you know, I know they meant well, I know the intentions were good across the aisle when we debated that bill here in the House. And so many people came in here and said nobody is going to lose their job as a result of this bill. In fact, we're going to create jobs. It's going to be like Spain. We're going to create so many green jobs. Well, since then we found out Spain has actually lost two jobs for every one green job they have created, and now they are trying to abandon the very thing that this administration and this majority are trying to push us toward. But it was so ironic that so many people I am sure unintentionally saying that no one would lose their job because I know it wasn't intentional because obviously they hadn't written the bill, they hadn't read the bill, they had their talking points. But if you read toward the back of the bill, I don't remember the page number, I had it here on the floor and was reading from it at the time, the bill itself created a fund to pay people who lost their job as a result of that crap-and-trade bill. Not only that, it created a fund that would help reimburse them travel expenses to help them move to where their jobs were going as a result of that bill. So, whichever left wing organization wrote that bill, or whoever's staffer helped them write it, they knew people would lose their jobs right and left. That's why they were creating a fund in there. But my friends across the aisle had not read it. Apparently, the deliberative process from their standpoint was ram the stuff through, don't read it, don't get bothered with the actual provisions in the bill. Push it through, and we'll find out what's in it later. Apparently, that's deliberative. That's no bill to saddle America with. It means more lost jobs. Now, we had another job fair last week in east Texas, this one in Nacogdoches. We had over 550 people attend, around four, five dozen employers that were there. Some people left with jobs that didn't have them. Some people have hope for the future through the interview process. And, normally, when you throw a party, you are really thrilled when people show up. But just as I saw in Marshall and Longview when we had a job fair there, and Lufkin, you look in the eyes of folks who have lost their jobs and you can't be pleased that the turnout is big because every one represents hurt, it represents lost finances, people struggling, many of them struggling for self-esteem because even though it wasn't their fault, so many get their strength and their pride from the job that they hold. And so it's very difficult to see so many people out of work. But what I keep hearing also from businesses is the same thing, similar thing: they can't get credit, they can't get loans from their bank. Banks are telling them they're not going to extend their line of credit because they got regulators breathing down their throats. Because regulators, on instructions from this town are out there telling them, micromanaging, telling good community, solid community banks that were not the source of the problems--the source of the biggest problems were those on Wall Street that give four to one to Democrats. That was the big source, the investment banking firms, not the community banking firms. But the community banking firms, on instructions from those who were closest to the investment banking firms telling the regulators to go after them. And even hold them to having more in reserve than the law requires. Had that admission from regulators themselves. And so people don't have capital because this obese monstrosity of a government that keeps growing can't control its appetite. And so it sucks up all the capital and throws it away on the government's pet projects. It's no way to run a country. It's a way to lose a country. Well, I didn't intend to spend that much time on the economy, but having heard so many comments from my friends across the aisle on what I believed and what I support, which were things that I simply do not, and have not supported, I had to address that. But there are so many dangers in the world. One of them, of course, is this out-of-control spending. And one final thing on the economy, my friends across the aisle keep talking about how bad it's been since 2007, 2008, 2009. And the fact is they've been controlling everything but the White House since January of 2007. So when they took control and they let spending explode on their watch--they were right. They won the majority because Republicans did not control spending, and too many Republicans equated compassion with spending. And so Democrats over and over, over and over came to the floor and said, you know, a hundred billion, $200 billion deficit in 1 year is outrageous. It shouldn't be allowed. We need to be in the majority so we'll control the spending. We'll cut the deficit. We'll get back on track. And so Republicans appropriately lost the majority because they had not controlled spending. And what has happened since? Spending has gone through the roof. And under this administration, once the Democrats had the White House and both Houses with such huge majorities, spending became giddiness, and that hundred, $200 billion deficit in a year has bloomed now to a $1.5 trillion dollar deficit in a year. It's unbelievable. And at the same time, it's been encouraging to see this administration in the past week show some friendliness toward our wonderful ally Israel, because all of the snubbing and pettiness by this administration in the way that it's treated Israel in conjunction with willing allies like The New York Times, like the 5,000-page editorial that was written about, there's just so much pettiness and snubbing of our friend Israel from this administration and its allies that they're hurting this Nation. Because when you hurt Israel, you hurt a true democracy in the middle of the Middle East, you hurt this country. You hurt any democracy when you hurt democracy that exists in the Middle East. And I read this weekend an editorial written by Caroline Glick, and it's entitled, ``Fit for The New York Times.'' And Caroline Glick is so articulate. I wanted to read verbatim what she had to say about the article in The New York Times. So I will read from Caroline Glick. This was published July 9, 2010. She says, ``Two important statements this week shed a light on the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Both were barely noted by the media. ``On Saturday the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas gave U.S. mediator George Mitchell a letter detailing a number of concessions that he would make towards Israel in a final peace treaty. These included a willingness to accept permanent Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City and over the Western Wall. The Al-Hayat report received enthusiastic and expansive coverage in the Israeli media and in media outlets throughout the world. ``What was barely noted was that just hours after the report hit the airwaves, Abbas's chief negotiator Saeb Erekat categorically denied the story. In an interview with Israel Radio, Saeb Erekat said the story was untrue. ``Abbas has been the recipient of adulatory press coverage in Israel over the past several days. Last week he thrilled the Hebrew-language media when he invited Israeli reporters to a sumptuous feast at his Ramallah headquarters. And then the Al-Hayat story came out. Lost in the excitement was Abbas's eulogy for arch terrorist Muhammad Daoud Oudeh who died over the weekend. Oudeh was the mastermind of the PLO's massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics. Abbas himself served the operation's paymaster. ``As Palestinian Media Watch reported, in a condolence telegram quoted in the Abbas-controlled Al-Hayat al Jadida newspaper, Abbas touted Oudeh as, `a wonderful brother, companion, tough and stubborn, relentless fighter,' and described him as `one of the prominent leaders of the Fatah movement.' ``So while the local and international media pounced on the Al-Hayat story as proof that the Palestinians are serious about peace, they failed to mention that their hope was based on a story that the Palestinians themselves deny. So too, in their rush to embrace Abbas, they failed to mention his glorification of an unrepentant mass murderer who commanded the terror squad that massacred Israel's Olympic athletes. ``These statements by Palestinian officials the media routinely characterize as moderates, demonstrates how deeply distorted and largely irrelevant the discourse on the Middle East has become. As the `moderate' Palestinians insist they are uninterested in peaceful coexistence and territorial compromise with Israel, news coverage in Israel and throughout the Western world is dominated by other issues. Specifically, discussion of prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is dominated by an endless discussion of Israel's Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and Jewish neighborhoods in eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem. ``The most egregious recent example of this distortion was a 5,000 word article in Tuesday's New York Times regarding US charitable contributions to these Jewish communities. Titled, `Tax Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in the West Bank,' the report was co-authored by five Times reporters. It was the product of weeks of research. And notably, the New York Times chose to publish it on its front page above the fold on the very day that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited the White House. ``The Times article is a textbook case of the media's ideologically motivated aggression against Middle East reality. Any way you look at it, it is a premeditated affront to the very notion that the role of a newspaper is to report facts rather manufacture news aimed at shaping perceptions and skewing debate. ``The article goes to great lengths to discredit the American citizens who make charitable, tax deductible donations to organizations that provide lawful support to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and Jewish neighborhoods in southern, northern and eastern Jerusalem. It paints a sinister picture of such contributions and contributors and accuses them of actively undermining U.S. foreign policy. ``The contributors, we are told in the opening lines of the report are the Left's bogeyman--Evangelical Christians and religious Jews. They are unacceptable actors in the Middle East because they both believe that Jewish control of Judea and Samaria is a precursor to the coming of the messiah. ``Reacting to the Times' report, on Wednesday Honest Reporting noted that the article appears to be the product of active collusion between the Times and the radical, anti-Zionist, tax-exempt Gush Shalom organization. As Honest Reporting relays, in July of 2009, Gush Shalom sent out a communique to its supporters calling for the initiation of a campaign that, `includes a combination of legal action and public advocacy aimed at denying Federal tax exempt (501c3) status to U.S. charities supporting settlement activity.' ``The Times' article bears all the markings of a political campaign. First, despite the valiant efforts of five Times reporters, the article exposes no illegal activity. At best, its investigation of more than forty organizations that contribute funds to the hated Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria indicated that less than a handful of them are guilty of poor accounting practices.'' Assuming that Honest Reporting's emminently reasonable conclusion that the Times report is the product of collaboration between the newspaper and radical anti-Zionist groups is accurate, the report is shockingly hypocritical. By publishing it, the New York Times is engaging in the precise behavior it argues the organizations it investigated should be punished for purportedly engaging in. To wit, in the service of radical tax deductible organizations, the Times seeks to undermine U.S. foreign policy. For the past four decades, it has been the foreign policy of the United States to maintain a strategic alliance with Israel. The goal of Times-aligned groups like Gush Shalom is to undermine that alliance by discrediting and criminalizing those who wish to strengthen and maintain it. The Times article uses dark language and innuendo to create the impression that there is something treacherous and evil about contributions to Jewish communities in neighborhoods in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. For instance, the article argues, ``The donations to the settler movement stand out from other charitable, and this is in brackets, from other charitable contributions that promote U.S. foreign policy goals, close brackets, because of the centrality of the settlement issue in the current talks and the fact that Washington has consistently refused to allow Israel to spend American government aid in the settlements. Tax breaks for the donations remain largely unchallenged and unexamined by the American government.'' What the Times fails to acknowledge is that the reason these donations are ``largely unchallenged and unexamined'' is because it is the constitutional right of American citizens to contribute to charities that promote policy goals, even when those goals, like those of Gush Shalom, are antithetical to U.S. policy as determined by the U.S. Government. The New York Times alleges that these communities are illegal. Its authority for this allegation is none other than the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. Erekat opined to the paper, ``Settlements violate international law.'' The truth is that Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines are legal. But even if one were to accept the argument that they are unlawful, one would be accepting an argument based on the language of the Fourth Geneva Convention from 1949 which prevents occupying powers from transferring their population to the areas under occupation. There is no possible reading of the convention that would prohibit the voluntary movement of Israelis to Judea, Samaria and post-1967 neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Likewise, there is no possible reading of the convention that would prohibit the provision of financial support to Israelis who voluntarily move to the areas in question. Yet it is precisely this indisputably lawful, voluntary movement of Jews to these areas which the Times acknowledges is often done against the wishes of Israel's government that the Times article attacks. In short, the Times' contention that there is something legally problematic about these donations is preposterous, both as it relates to U.S. law and as it relates to international law. From a journalistic perspective, worse than the Times' decision to engage in precisely the behavior it seeks to criminalize when carried out by its political nemesis on the Christian and Jewish right and worse even than the article's false characterization of law is the article's clear attempt to obfuscate the main problem with land issues in Judea and Samaria. This it does in the interests of manufacturing a false but ideologically sympathetic picture of the situation on the ground. The Times only gets around to alluding to and obfuscating the real problem with the land issues in the 58th paragraph of the article. The Times reports ``Islamic judicial panels have threatened death to Palestinians who sell property in the occupied territories to Jews.'' Actually, while this may be true, it is not the problem. The problem is that the second law promulgated by the Palestinian Authority just weeks after it was established in 1994 criminalized all Arab land sales to Jews as a capital crime. Since 1994, scores of Arabs have been killed in both judicial and extrajudicial executions for selling land to Jews. This open move to hide the fact that since 1994 the PA has dispatched death squads to murder both Palestinians and Israeli Arabs suspected of selling land to Jews is a shocking miscarriage of journalistic standards. Whereas the New York Times required five reporters to work for weeks to come up with exactly nothing illegal in the operations of U.S. charitable groups that support Jewish communities the Times wishes to destroy, the Times would have needed to invest no resources whatsoever to discover that the PA kills any Arab who sells land to Jews. The PA has made no effort to hide this policy. It is in the public sphere for anyone willing to look at reality. That is, of course, the real issue here. The entire New York Times investigation, so-called, of American charitable groups that support Jewish communities in neighborhoods in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem is a blatant attempt by major newspaper to hide the real issues prolonging the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Those issues exposed by Abbas's praise for a terrorist mass murderer, Erekat's denial that Abbas has any interest in compromising with Israel, as well as by the PA's policy of killing all Arabs who sell lands to Jews, do not serve the Times' purpose of blaming the absence of peace on Israel generally and on the Israeli right and its supporters in the U.S. in particular. And so it is that 17 years after the start of the so-called peace process between Israel and the PLO, and 10 years after the PLO destroyed that process by launching a terror war against Israel, and 4\1/2\ years after the Palestinians elected Hamas to lead them, we are still stuck in a distorted, irrelevant discourse about the Middle East. We are stuck in a rut because politically and ideologically motivated media organs operate hand-in-glove with radical groups seeking to undermine Israel's national sovereignty and end its alliance with the U.S. Together, they manufacture news that bears no relation with reality or the true challenges facing those who seek peace in the Middle East. But obviously for the New York Times, that is what makes it fit to print. That was posted July 9, 2010, 7:27 a.m. by my friend Caroline Glick. The article speaks for itself. It is a sad day when the New York Times has become such a political hack of a newspaper that in the summer of 1973, when I was in the Soviet Union, it was exciting. Actually, got a chance of going over there through Europe, coming out through Europe, to see a New York Times, especially in English. Exciting. And it was trusted to be the international resource. So it is a bit heartbreaking that as its sales circulation continues to plummet, it continues to lose money, that it continues to proceed with the very things that have brought down its reputation and hurt it as such an objective resource. Doing reports growing up as a kid, you knew you could count on anything that you found in the New York Times and cite it as a valuable and accurate resource. Not so anymore. Not so anymore. Israel is a friend, and I'm grateful that democracy has worked to the extent that this administration got concerned about its plummeting numbers enough that it realized maybe this time it should treat the Prime Minister of Israel with some respect, just as it is and just as it has heads of states of countries that despise us and have said they would be glad to see us fall as a Nation. It's nice if they could treat Prime Minister Netanyahu with the same respect that it treats some of our sworn enemies. Very interesting. There's just so much to cover, so little time. But I did want to address that issue and the fact that Iran is continuing to have its centrifuges spin. It has been reported by this administration, by the IAEA, that Iran has apparently at least enough uranium material, at least, to manufacture two nuclear weapons. So the rhetorical question to be asked, How many nuclear bombs does it take to become an existential threat to Israel or to this Nation? I would submit a nuke in New York Harbor, coming up the Potomac, the Houston and New Orleans shipping channel taking out the majority of our energy resources, Los Angeles, the lake right up next to Chicago, the effect could be existential to the U.S. This isn't a game. You can't keep walking around blaming the prior administration. Yes, I was upset with the Bush administration with the TARP. Yes, this administration went right out and hired the same people that helped push that thing through. And they're still pushing it. Still like it. Should have never been passed. That was a huge mistake by the Bush administration, and we should not continue to confound it. Well, just as we've seen the New York Times can twist and distort, we've seen throughout America people distorting our heritage. And so in an effort to correct yet another distortion, I want to finish with this. This is from a book written by Peter Lillback, ``Wall of Misconception.'' A small book, lots of resources. Dr. Lillback says: ``Everyone agrees that George Washington was critical for the formation of America's values. Washington was conscious that his every act created a precedent for good or ill for all that would follow him. As our first President, everything he did established precedents for how our country was to work. ``So there is no accident that so many have sought to portray Washington as a man without faith. For if he exercised faith in the public square, this in turn argues that the Judeo-Christian system still has relevance and vitality in the public square today. Did Washington's legacy include strong precedents of advocating the Judeo- Christian values in the public square? Recent authors have declared an emphatic no. ``Randall writes, `Washington was not a deeply religious man.' Douglas Southall Freeman says, `He had believed that a God directed his path, but he had not been particularly ardent in his faith.' James Thomas Flexner states that `Washington . . . avoided, as was his deist custom, the word ``God.'' ' Judging from these writers, Washington could hardly be called a `godly leader.' But are these claims correct?'' I could go on, as I have, taking people on tours through this building for about 2 or 3 hours with what Washington wrote and said and did. But continuing Dr. Lillback's book: ``The very men who gave us the First Amendment did not intend to impose a radical separation of church and State that is advocated by so many today. In fact, the day after Congress adopted the words of the First Amendment, they sent a message to President Washington asking him to declare a day of thanksgiving to show America's appreciation to God for the opportunity to create America's new national government in peace and tranquility. ``So on October 3, 1789, President Washington made a Proclamation of a National Day of Thanksgiving. He declared: Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God''--I guess he did use the word God--``to obey His will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor. And, whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me `to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God' ''--oops, he used it again--`` `especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness, now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the people of the United States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks, for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a Nation; for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of His providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for the great and various favors which He hath been pleased to confer upon us. ``And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions to enable us all-- and deists doesn't ask God to enable us to do anything--whether in public or private stations to perform our several relative duties properly and punctually.'' I see my time is running out so I will go straight to the bottom of George Washington's words: ``to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best. ``Given under my hand, at the City of New York, the 3rd of October, in the year of our Lord, 1789.'' Again, George Washington's words. Therefore, Madam Speaker, I yield back.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do appreciate my friend from Georgia's comments. He is right. That bailout of Wall Street was a disastrous mistake. I heard from my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who voted for it and from leaders on both sides of the aisle who pushed for that. The good news is, if you're a big fan of Goldman Sachs, they've made more profit than they've ever made in their history since the new administration took over. They had their best year ever last year. It's tragic that the American people have not done as well as the people who ran their own car off in a ditch and then had their neighbors involuntarily pull it out for them, and now they've used that car to run over the rest of America. It's rather tragic and that continues. I hope my friends have pointed out the injustice that's going on on Wall Street since they donate 4-1 to Democrats over Republicans. They did in the last election and have traditionally. Hopefully, our friends across the aisle will call upon their big donors on Wall Street, which is 4-1 Democrats over Republicans, despite what Americans think. They can check the facts. Hopefully, they'll get with their big donors, and will help them realize that they need to quit taking from America and that we need to get a level playing field. Senator Byrd and the Supreme Court Decision I rise, Mr. Speaker, tonight, not to get into partisan politics, because this is the last 15 minutes before we adjourn for the 4th of July. What an incredible day the 4th of July 1776 was. That document was referred to by the late Senator Robert Byrd in his speech that he gave on June 27, 1962, on the occasion of the Supreme Court's losing their collective mind in saying that the Constitution would not have been created were it not for the plea in the form of a motion by Benjamin Franklin that it would begin having prayer every day that Congress is in session, which was seconded by Mr. Sherman and unanimously adopted. If it were not for prayer, there would be no Constitution. The Supreme Court turned around in 1962 and said, You know what? We shouldn't have prayer in schools. So, in response to that, Senator Robert Byrd, who passed away this week, gave this incredible speech. I gave part of it last night, and I want to pick up, basically, where I left off. Senator Byrd, on June 27, 1962, says, Additional proof that American national life is God-centered comes from this Library of Congress inscription: ``The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth not.'' John 1:5. On the east hall of the second floor of the Library of Congress, an anonymous inscription assures all Americans that they do not work alone--``for a web begun God sends thread.'' One of the most hallowed documents in the Nation's Capital is the Declaration of Independence--parenthetically I add, which will be honored this weekend. Back to Robert Byrd's speech. He says,--to which I have already alluded. It contains the basic philosophy of our government, according to which God is the source of our rights. The original document can be seen by Americans visiting in Washington from throughout the 50 States of the Union. One of the most impressive and beautiful sights in the Capital City is the Washington Monument rising above the city. When it was being built, citizens and organizations were permitted to donate blocks of stone containing inscriptions and appropriate quotations. Starting from the top of the monument, one may read three biblical quotations on the 24th landing. One, donated by the Methodist Church of New York, reads: ``The memory of the just is blessed.'' Proverbs 10:7. The Sunday School children of the Methodist Church of Philadelphia contributed a stone bearing the inscription: ``Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.'' Proverbs 22:6. The third stone bears these words of Christ: ``Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.'' Luke 18:6. Twice in the monument appear the words ``Holiness to the Lord.'' Exodus 28:36. One of the stones was given by the Grand Lodge of the Free Masons of Pennsylvania. The donor of the second stone is anonymous. Among many similar expressions throughout the Monument, we find this one from the City of Richmond, Virginia, on the 18th landing. ``Tuum nos sumus monumentum. We are thy Monument.'' The city of Boston placed a stone slab on the 15th landing on which appear the words: ``Sicut patribus sit Deus nobis. As God was to our fathers, may He be unto us.'' Baltimore's contribution at the 12th level reads: ``May heaven to this Union continue its beneficence.'' The Indiana Lodge of Odd Fellows contributed a stone on the sixth landing which reads: ``In God We trust.'' The United Sons of America provided a stone bearing the inscription: ``God and Nature's land.'' Near the Washington Monument is the Lincoln Memorial, the Nation's tribute to its martyred Civil War President. This massive shrine pays homage to the greatness of a simple heroic man whose very life was offered on the altar of liberty. The gentleness, power, and determination of Lincoln comes to us clearly through the features chiseled in granite by the sculptor. We can almost hear Lincoln speak the words which are cut into the wall by his side: ``That this Nation under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and a government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.'' In his second inaugural address, the great President made use of the words ``God,'' ``Bible,'' ``prayer,'' ``providence,'' ``Almighty,'' and ``divine attributes.'' Then his address continues: ``As was said 3,000 years ago so it must still be said, ``The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'' Lincoln goes on, ``With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the Nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the brunt of the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.'' On the walls of the Jefferson Memorial which stands at the south end of the Tidal Basin are inscribed Jefferson's words: ``I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.'' On a panel near the statue we find in Jefferson's words a forceful and explicit warning that to remove God from this country will destroy it. Here he, Jefferson, says: ``God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Establish the law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the State to effect and on a general plan.'' Jefferson foresaw that time would change conditions in this country, but he believed in the unchanging truth which would persist through any age. He held that the dignity of man came not from man itself, but from God. His memorial in our Nation's Capital is a constant reminder that respect for men is based upon his close affinity with God. Let me remind, these are the words from the speech given by Robert Byrd, Senator, in 1962. I continue with Robert Byrd's words. Let us reflect for a moment on the fact that Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, the giants of America, had this in common: They all paid repeated public tribute to this Nation's dependence upon God. Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 stood to his feet one day, the oldest man in that illustrious gathering, and addressed the chair in which sat General George Washington. Franklin said: ``Sir, I have lived a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: God still governs in the affairs of men, and if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it possible that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings that except the Lord build a house, they labor in vain that build it.'' Franklin went on to move that a member of the clergy be invited to participate in the meetings from day-to-day that they might invoke the wisdom and guidance of The Father of Lights; ``Else,'' he said, ``we shall succeed no better than did the builders of Babel.'' Here was a real man; here was a statesman; here was an inventor; here was a philosopher; a man who had served his country; a wise man who had faith in a higher power; who had courage to express that faith. Our country's truly great men, Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin, Wilson, Robert E. Lee, and I need not name others, these gigantic pillars of strength in the structure of American history were men who believed in a Higher Power, and they had the courage to express that belief in their words, their writings and their deeds. Senator Byrd went on. In the U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, can be seen ample evidence that our courts are conducted according to belief in the Almighty. Thus we find in the Supreme Court tribunal such phrases as ``divine inspiration,'' ``truth,'' ``safeguard of the rights of the people,'' ``defense of human rights,'' and ``liberty and peace.'' Just outside of Washington, we find the Pentagon, the world's largest office building and the center of American armed services. Flanking the main entrance are two signs which read: ``Worship daily according to your faith.'' Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish religious services are held at the Pentagon, and members of the three faiths are urged to attend. The militarily leaders, too, recognized the necessity for strong spiritual training. General of the Army Omar Bradley said: ``This country has many men of science, too few men of God. It has grasped the mystery of the atom, but rejected the Sermon on the Mount.'' As a lifetime soldier who has seen countless thousands of young Americans in uniform, he further observed: ``This shocking apathy to the conditions of their schools and the sterility of the curriculum is responsible even today for the political immaturity, the economic ignorance, the philosophical indifference, and the spiritual insolvency of so many young men.'' In Washington stands the statue of Francis Asbury, a Methodist bishop and pioneer, who died in 1816. The statue, erected with the permission of Congress in 1924, carries the inscription: ``His continuous journeying through cities, villages, and settlements from 1771 to 1816 greatly promoted patriotism, education, and religion in the American Republic.'' Other monuments to religion include those of James Cardinal Gibbons, given by the Knights of Columbus, and a statue of Saint Joan of Arc donated to the Capital by a French women's society. The nuns who in Civil War days attended the wounded and dying on battlefields are commemorated in Washington's statues with the inscription: ``They comforted the dying, nursed the wounded, carried hope to the imprisoned, gave in His name a drink of water to the thirsty.'' Before leaving Washington, the visitor may make a final stop at the National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia. Here are peaceful ranks of crosses and stars of David, reminding us that our government has given its fallen men back to the God who gave them life. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier stands for all those fallen in battle who could not be identified, members of all sects, faiths, and religions. And here, once more, we find the acknowledgment of God's divine power in the eloquent words: ``Here lies in honored glory, an American soldier, known but to God.'' These are the words I have been reading from the speech given in 1962 by Senator Robert Byrd, the late Senator, as a great testament to the faith in God that encompassed and inhabited this city for so very long. Our President says we are not a Christian Nation. I will not debate that with him. But I know our history, I know where we came from, and the things of this city, the things of this building and history of this great Nation point tribute to the fact that is where we came from. And may God help us if we fail to recognize that is where we came from, and it is God to whom all blessings and thanksgiving should flow.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution 293, 111th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, well, we heard from CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, rather interesting. Got a nice quote. Director Elmendorf announced that, in part of his statement he said, the gloomy, long-term picture is not an argument for rejecting additional spending now to bolster the economic recovery. Indeed, he said, ``Enacting cuts in spending or increases in taxes now would probably slow the recovery.'' If you read the charge for CBO, it's a little bit gray. But when you have an organization that can't seem to get right what the projections are for the costs, when you can't get the costs right for what is requested, as we saw with the health care bill, as we saw with so many things they projected, they have been hundreds of millions, billions, hundreds of billions of dollars off over time, and yet the Director's going to come in and tell us that enacting spending cuts are going-- well, they could jeopardize, possibly slow the recovery. And it's been great to hear my colleagues talk about all the jobs that have been created. We know, for example, in the last month 431,000 jobs, new jobs have been created by this administration. And you really do have to give the administration credit for most of the jobs that were created last month, because when we got the numbers, of the 431,000 jobs, 411,000 of them were census workers. Great news. Unfortunately, those jobs are going to be gone just in a matter of a very few months. So there's 411,000 jobs. And it's true, President Bush took office after the 2000 census had been completed so he didn't get to create 411,000 jobs in 1 month, as this administration has, for census workers. Unfortunately for him, the economy experienced the most incredible blow at a time coming off the dot-com bubble of the late nineties. The economy was hurting, and then 9/11 happened. And if it had not been for the tax cuts, we would have been surely in the midst of a great depression, perhaps like the 1930s. So the tax cuts helped stimulate the economy, helped get things going in a good way. The problem is that once the Republicans not only had the House and Senate, like they did from 1995 to 2000, not only did they balance the budget--and the President doesn't do that. The Congress has to do that. But not only did they balance the budget in the Republican Congress, but they also reformed welfare, and for the first time since the beginning of welfare, after a welfare reform that the Congress did, and I think President Clinton vetoed it and then once they had the votes to override the veto the second time he didn't, he went ahead and signed it. Now he's quite proud of it because, out of that welfare reform, the fact is--and I saw this on the chart that was presented back in 2005 at Harvard, of all places. I got the impression many of them were shocked. But when you looked at single women's income since welfare came into existence, when adjusted for inflation, their income was flatlined over that 30-year period. After welfare reform, they were pushed, basically pushed out of the rut, out of the rutted mess that the Federal Government had created for them and not allowed them out of. The welfare reform actually pushed them toward reaching their God-given potential. And so for the first time since welfare had been created in the 1960s, single women's income, when adjusted for inflation, started going up. And it continued. But now, after Republicans got both the White House, and House, and Congress, they found out it was kind of fun to spend when you had a President that wouldn't veto anything. And then you had a President that was sending over requests for more money than conservative Republicans really were comfortable with, and they would compromise, and it would still be more money than both should have spent. There is apparently this giddiness that occurs when one party has the White House, House, and Senate like we have seen the last year-and-a- half. And even in the House and Senate in 2007 and 2008 we saw a great giddiness and just runaway spending like the country had never faced until the last year-and-a-half. And so when I hear about all these great jobs that are being created, more jobs in the last year-and-a- half than were created in the whole 8 years, I think they forgot to say what the President and Vice President always include, created and saved. Because when you say you saved a job, that means it's impossible to ever prove that. And it's impossible to disprove that. You know, it's like that old story about the guy who says, ``What is your job?'' He says, ``I keep elephants from running in this house.'' He says, ``Well, there aren't any elephants around here.'' ``That's right, I'm doing a great job, aren't I?'' Well, it's the same kind of deal. You know, they've saved, probably can take credit for saving every job in America if they want to, and I am sure at some point they will get to based upon the claims that are being made these days. But it's an interesting time. And what we've also seen today was the passage of the financial deform bill. I was hoping for reform, but that's not what we got. And I know so many of my colleagues across the aisle have good hearts, good minds, and the best of intentions. But as we saw with TARP, many people on both sides of the aisle, and what we have seen since then, since this President took office, when this President says let's get this bill passed, then they can basically come up with 2,000 pages that only foolish idiots like me would try to read. And so what they're left with, if you don't try to get through the boring reading is, you get the talking points. So well-meaning people, not believing that anybody would possibly give them talking points that weren't 100 percent accurate, come to the floor, and with the best of intentions, meaning well, read the talking points and say things like this will end the massive bailouts. Bless their hearts. They don't realize if they would read specific provisions of this bill they will find out it does just the opposite. This financial deform bill that was passed today creates a systemic risk council. Let me tell you how systemic risk should be taken care of. Goldman Sachs gets greedy, runs their cart in a ditch, AIG gets greedy and sells insurance called credit default swaps and they get their cart in a ditch, we have something called bankruptcy. You don't have to liquidate. Gosh, don't do that, because most of the departments at AIG, it sounds like were quite liquid. They were doing well. Just start splitting it up, selling it off. Then it will never be too big to fail again. But that's not what happened. We've bailed out Goldman Sachs to the point that since this administration took office and cut all these contracts with Goldman Sachs, they had their highest profit year in the whole history of the country. While the country was hurting, they had record profits. And much of it has to be credited to this government. I am sure people meant well, but that's not the kind of financial reform we need when we got this financial deform bill today. That financial deform bill today allows and creates this systemic risk council. They are going to get to pick the winners and losers. Washington, of all places, is going to get to decide you are too important to fail, you are too important to fail, you are too important to fail. We're going to pick the winners and losers. I don't like that when that's done from Washington, when Washington says, hey, down in your district, none of us live there, but here's who you need to elect. You know, why don't you let the district, why don't you let the people there in the district decide. Washington gets around to saying this is the business we think is too important to fail. You know, it's insane. And the health care bill that was passed, the ObamaCare bill, it had all kinds of stuff in there that was going to let the government get their two cents in and take over control of so many aspects, not just the health care. I mean they ordered things for restaurants, and machines, and all kinds of stuff in it. It wasn't about health care. It was about GRE, government running everything. And so that's what this financial bill is about. And then also we find out today in our Natural Resources hearing, Mr. Salazar, and I know this will be a shock to my former freshman classmate Member of Congress Bobby Jindal, but I am reading from Secretary Salazar's testimony today in our hearing, and I've got to get word to Mr. Jindal, Governor Jindal. He said, and I am quoting, ``Secretary Napolitano, Director Browner, and myself, frankly, we were in the gulf coast probably within--been down there 10 times there in Houston since it started. But we made a call from the command center''--I guess that's in Houston--``to Secretary Gates and to the White House that essentially gave the authorization to the States to move forward with the Coast Guard within a few days after this incident occurred. So it is for me, frankly, surprising that you do not have the governors of these States moving forward with the deployment of these National Guard troops.'' Oh, that's great. With all the failures of this Department of Interior, the Secretary has the nerve to come in and blame the governors of those States that have tried to play by the rules and say, look, we understand your law that you have from Washington, we have to get your permission, so please, how about giving us permission? And then he comes in here today and says, I'm frankly surprised they didn't move forward with their National Guard troops. Give me a break. What kind of gall does it take to come into a committee, oh, gee, I don't know why the governors didn't do more. I've been to Houston 10 times. How about getting out there where the rubber meets the road? Or even better, when you were sending--when the Secretary, Mr. Speaker, was sending two inspectors to the offshore rigs to inspect, and we find out their only check and balance was to say we'll send them out in pairs. The last two that went out there were a father and son unionized team. And we don't know, the director couldn't tell us in committee, he said that's under investigation. You don't get to see what the investigation is here in Congress, but that's under investigation. We'll get back to you on that after we've done what we want to do. I tell you, it's just unbelievable what's gone on. And then we hear, gee, these things that the public is so outraged about, Washington doing, we're probably going to wait until a lame duck session when the public may vote people out that they're mad at because they're wanting to do things, and then they can just pass it because they won't care because they will have already been voted out of office. I'm telling you, Mr. Speaker, that is the wrong thing to do. It is wrong morally, ethically. It's just wrong. If people get voted out of office because they were thinking about doing something, talking about doing something, they should not come in here and do it after they've been voted out. And then we have all of this indignation from the northeast about some of the things going on in the gulf, and then low and behold, gosh, news here. I didn't notice it when it came through. Here's an article from February 2, 2010. Coast Guard's been busy and not just with the gulf coast. This was February 2, 2010. ``U.S. Coast Guard officials say they've developed a security plan to allow the safe passage of tankers carrying liquefied natural gas from Yemen through the Port of Boston.'' Then it goes on to quote Coast Guard Captain John Healey and to quote Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen, if that rings a bell. He's saying that it could include additional screening of the crew, extra inspections on the ship. And then it goes on to say: ``One of the top concerns for security officials is making sure no stowaways manage to board the tankers at the port in Yemen,'' where terrorists seem to be going and coming from these days so often, or during the voyage. ``That's really the key here, to ensure that we have a security force on board ship that's checking the ship while it's loading and while it's in Yemeni waters to guarantee that no one who's not authorized gets aboard the ship.'' Because they're saying, see, the contract used to be with countries that were completely friendly who had never sent a terrorist here or a terrorist to be trained in other areas or allowed Yemen to be, or their country to be, a place of safety for terrorists that wanted to destroy our country or from which an attack on one of our U.S. ships happened. We had a contract that had liquefied natural gas from other countries. The fact is if we allowed the gas to be produced from this country, we have over 100 years' worth of natural gas if it were allowed to be produced. But, no, we're going to risk bringing in a tanker from Yemen. Not just a tanker. This says the contract's for 20 years to bring tankers with natural gas loaded into Boston Harbor. Think about an explosion on that ship. That's what the article points out. You talk about a terrorist attack. Man, we're gonna bring in the bomb from Yemen where the terrorists have been located so often. And then it turns out people on Capitol Hill have been getting calls that raised a question about it, is this really a good idea. They get a call, look, we're trying to build up Yemen. We're trying to help this country that's supporting our enemies so maybe they'll like us better. Let me tell you, I got a U.N. voting accountability bill. I filed it all three sessions. I'm hopeful we'll get it to the floor. We're going to file for a discharge petition to require it to be brought to the floor. It's very simple. It says any country--every country is its own sovereign. They can do what it wants. But any country that votes against us in more than half of the contested votes in the U.N., they're just getting no financial assistance from us. As I have been quoted before saying, you don't have to pay people to hate you. They'll hate you for free. So why are we pouring billions and billions of dollars into countries hoping eventually they're going to like us. They're not. You don't buy friendliness.

Mr. GOHMERT. You can't buy friendship. Didn't people learn that on the playground? You can give somebody your sandwich, you can give somebody your lunch money and hope that they leave you alone, but all they do is keep coming back for more sandwiches or more money. You can't buy love and affection because you are looked at as a John, not as a lover. It's tragic, but that's what we're doing: trying to buy love and affection from people that hate us. It doesn't work. So here we've got this natural gas contract supposedly going on for the next 20 years. And we have over 100 years of natural gas that's already been found in this country. There's no massive oil spills that come from that. A wonderful Democrat friend across the aisle did some of his growing up over in Longview, Texas, has a bill to start getting cars, put that incentive out there, get cars on to natural gas. That will be a huge help because we have so much natural gas in this country that it will eliminate so much of our dependence on foreign oil. So Dan's got a good bill. And yet the answer apparently from this administration is we're going to buy--not use our own natural gas--we're going to buy it from Yemen hoping they'll like us better. Maybe they won't try to blow up our ships and be a safe haven for terrorists who want to blow up our country. But that's what we're looking at. It isn't good. It's rather tragic. A lot more I could say about that, but I just could not get over the gall of the Secretary of the Interior to come in here and demean those Governors. But the message should go out to Governors all over the areas potentially affected by the oil spill in the gulf created by British Petroleum, who, if it were in the old days, ought to be horsewhipped, those who are responsible. We'll find out for sure exactly what happened. And when we do--it sounds like we're getting word as to what happened. There were corners being cut right and left. The safety record of BP compared to the other oil companies was abysmal. But when we find out that they were the best friends that this administration had in the oil business and they were the best friends for our Democrat Senators down the aisle, down the Hall here, we find out that their lobbyists are mostly close friends of this administration and our Democratic friends down the Hall here, they realize heck, they should have had their back covered. They were close enough. They were supporting the climate, actually the global warming bill, now called climate change bill because turns out the planet's not warming. But that's a whole other subject. But is it so hard to understand why they thought their back was covered? While the Deepwater Horizon rig was sinking in the gulf after the explosion, Senator Kerry was still getting hold of British Petroleum. Some of the articles we found. He was still getting hold of them hoping they'll stay on board with the climate change bill. The administration, of course, would not want to jump on their big oil company friends. Their support in the elections, it was so helpful. Their support for, like, even the gas hike, the gas tax hike that is being proposed. Some of the things nobody else in the industry would support it would seem. BP was their buddy. So it makes sense that the administration wouldn't immediately want to jump on BP. They're hoping that BP wasn't lying to them, that they will get this thing under control and it will be all right. Then they come through here and push through their global warming bill and get that done, the crap-and-trade bill that is going to create, as former chairman of Energy and Commerce, former Chairman Dingell, had indicated this is not only a tax, it is a great big tax, which apparently may have had something to do with him losing his chairmanship Anyway, let's think about what we're doing because it has dramatic effects across the country. Of course, we know we are also telling Israel not to--or apparently this administration has been telling Israel, Just lay off. Let them build the illegal Palestinian settlements. Don't try to defend yourself. Get ready to give away more land. We are putting on all this pressure. Don't defend yourself even though Iran is developing--now we know--enough uranium for two bombs. Of course, one would be enough to wipe out much of Israel, but don't defend yourself. We're putting all that pressure on them. That doesn't make sense. Why would we do that to our best ally in the Middle East, to one of the best friends this country could have in the whole world, to one of the few--maybe sometimes the only one--that truly stands up with us like 95 percent of the time in the U.N. more than most anybody else? Yet we're turning our backs on them, and we're telling them not to protect their own country. Don't stand for what is going to help Israel stand? Why would they do that? Then we start seeing things that help it make sense, like with this sign. Now, down in Arizona, it turns out we've got a wilderness area down in Arizona that the park police can go in but not with any mechanized vehicles or mechanical equipment that is motorized. Also, the Border Patrol can't go there. The only people who can go there with impunity are people illegally going through, and that is why this warning sign says: Active drug and human smuggling area. It is like the city that spends more to put up a sign that says there is a bump in the road than it would cost them just to fix the bump. Don't put up a sign. Fix the problem. This is the United States. Why are we just saying, Hey, look. Here is a sign. There is active drug and human smuggling in this area. They are coming through with mechanized vehicles and with all kinds of motorized things they may be using. They are violent. It says visitors may encounter armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed. That is because only the illegals can come through here using vehicles, because we don't let the Border Patrol in there with vehicles, and we know law enforcement gets shot. Then it starts to make sense. Oh, okay. We're just trying to avoid being hypocrites as a nation. We are telling Israel not to defend itself, to let people overrun them and to let those rockets fly constantly. Don't bother to check the ships that come in, the flotillas that come into the Gaza Strip. Just let the rockets keep flying. We are able to say that without being hypocrites because that's what we're doing. We're not protecting ourselves. We say, Look, Israel. Get over it. We are letting ourselves be overrun. We're letting people come in illegally armed. We've let them take over part of the United States and we're not doing anything about it, so we're not being hypocritical when we say, Don't protect yourself, Israel. We're doing the same thing, see? That will make Israel feel better to know that we are not protecting ourselves. We have just turned over part of the United States of America to armed criminals who are illegally in this country. The truth is neither one of those is a good idea. The truth is Israel should defend itself. They should be able to stop the rockets that are attacking them from coming into areas. They should be able to stop illegal settlements. They should be able to do all of the things that are necessary for a nation to protect and preserve its national integrity. We lost a Senator this week. My time is running short, so I want to get through as much of this incredible speech as I can. I want it understood this was a speech given by Senator Robert Byrd, in 1962, after the Supreme Court decision to eliminate prayer in schools. This is from the official record. As time will permit, I will read Senator Robert Byrd's speech from 1962. You know, one of the things I love about America is, for the most part, it is a very forgiving country. A man who had been part of the Ku Klux Klan later was repentant. He was very sorry for being part of that organization, and he changed his ways and was completely embraced by his colleagues. This is Senator Byrd's speech from 1962: ``Mr. President, Thomas Jefferson expressed the will of the American majority in 1776 when he included in the Declaration of Independence the statement that `all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' ``Little could Mr. Jefferson suspect, when penned that line, that the time would come when the Nation's highest court would rule that a nondenominational prayer to the Creator, if offered by schoolchildren in the public schools of America during class periods, is unconstitutional. ``The June 25 Supreme Court decision is sufficiently appalling to disturb the God-fearing people of America and to make us all reflect upon the extraordinary nature of the times. For what, indeed, can we expect to happen next if this is to be the way things are going? Following the French Revolution, the atheist revolutionists hired a chorus girl to enter a church as the `Goddess of Reason' and thereby defile the name of the Almighty. Following the Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik Government established a giant museum, dedicated to the promotion of atheistic beliefs.'' I've been in that museum. I was sick to the point of nauseam, but back to Robert Byrd's speech. ``The American people were shocked by both moves. So it was in those days. But what about today? Can it be that we, too, are ready now to embrace the foul conception of atheism? ``It is hard to believe, but, then, what are the facts of the matter? Are we not in consequence of the Supreme Court ruling on schoolroom prayer, actually limited in teaching our children the value of God? And is this not, in fact, a first step on the road to promoting atheistic belief?'' As I turn the page of Mr. Byrd's speech on the Senate floor, let me parenthetically note that Robert Byrd's Christian beliefs are what caused him to disavow his membership and to ask forgiveness for his membership to the KKK. It went to the heart and soul of the man, and that is why he came to the floor in 1962 and gave this speech. Continuing on: ``In reading through the Court decision on school prayer, I am astonished by the empty arguments set forth by the majority as opposed to the lucid opinion recorded by Mr. Justice Potter Stewart, the lone dissenter. In answering the arguments of the majority, Justice Stewart did not see fit to engage in debate over matters of ancient history. As he put it: `` `What is relevant to the issue here is not the history of an established church in 16th century England or in 18th century America but the history of the religious traditions of our people, reflected in countless practices of the institutions and officials of our government.' ``To that, I would say, `Amen.' ``So this, indeed, the crux of the issue--the religious traditions of our people. ``Wherever one may go in this great national city, he is constantly reminded of the strong spiritual awareness of our forefathers who wrote the Federal Constitution, who built the schools and churches, who hewed the forests, dredged the rivers and the harbors, fought the savages, and created a republic. ``In no other place in the United States are there so many and such varied official evidences of deep and abiding faith in God on the part of government as there are in Washington. ``Let us speak briefly on some of the reminders in Washington that reaffirm the proposition that our country is founded on religious principles. The continuance of freedom depends on our restoring the same spiritual consciousness to the mainstream of American life today that made possible these monuments and tributes of the past. ``A visitor entering Washington by train sees the words of Christ prominently inscribed above the main arch leading into Union Station. Here at the very entrance to the seat of the Government of the United States are the words: `The truth shall make you free.' John 8:32. ``Nearby is another inscription cut into enduring stone, the words from the Eighth Psalm of the Old Testament: `Thou hast put all things under his feet.' ``A third inscription reiterates the spiritual theme: `Let all the end thou aimest at be thy country's, thy God's and truth's.' ``All three inscriptions acknowledge the dependence of our Republic upon the guiding hand of Almighty God. ``On Capitol Hill. ``Throughout the majestic Capital City, similar inscriptions testify to the religious faith of our forefathers. In the capital, we find prominently displayed for all of us to see the quotation from the Book of Proverbs, 4:7: `` `Wisdom is the principal thing: Therefore, get wisdom, and with all thy getting, get understanding.' ``The visitor to the Library of Congress may see a quotation from the Old Testament which reminds each American of his responsibility to his Maker. It reads, `What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justify and love mercy and to walk humbly with God?' Micah 6:8. ``Another scriptural quotation prominently displayed in the lawmakers' library preserves the Psalmist acknowledgment that all nature reflects the order and beauty of the Creator. `` `The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork.' Psalms 19:1. ``Underneath the statue of history in the Library of Congress are Tennyson's prophetic lines: `` `One God, one law, one element, and one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves.' ``Additional proof that American national life is God-centered comes from this Library of Congress inscription: `The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth not.' John 1:5. ``On the east hall of the second floor of the Library of Congress, an anonymous inscription assures all Americans that they do not work alone--`for a web begun, God sends thread.' '' I realize that my time is expiring at this moment. There is much, much more in this wonderful speech by the now late Senator Robert Byrd, and I will not stop in future sessions here on the floor until I have finished this wonderful speech by Robert Byrd. Though, for tonight, since I believe in playing by the rules, the rules require me to yield back. I do now yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, our guest chaplain today has been Reverend Dr. Paul W. Powell. He is retired dean of Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary and is a distinguished graduate of both Baylor and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has also been the president of the Southern Baptist Annuity Board and Baptist General Convention of Texas, along with a vast array of offices with many charitable institutions too numerous to mention. He is an author of 36 books and has been pastor of churches all over Texas and spanned two decades as pastor of Green Acres Baptist Church in Tyler, Texas, leading our church from about 700 members to over 7,000, where it fed and clothed the poor through founding the Good Samaritan Outreach Center and People Attempting to Help. Under his direction, our church began Hispanic church ministries, a Korean church ministry, dental and medical outreach ministries, as well as churches in Mexico, Belize, and many other places. Green Acres became the largest single donor to missions in the entire Southern Baptist Convention. He and his wife, Cathy, have three children: Kent, Mike, and Lori; and three grandchildren: Jordan, Katie, and Matthew. He is now the interim pastor of First Baptist Church in Tyler. He brings wisdom, accountability, growth, life, and light wherever he serves and truly has a heart after God's own. Seeking always to serve, he has been pastor, dean, president, chairman, director, officer, trustee of so many entities, but of most importance to me, he has been a friend, mentor, confidant, encourager, and inspiration. May God bless Paul Powell and his family.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I have appreciated my colleague's insights. Somebody who has spent his entire adult life working on the issues of health care and trying to be a healer and a helper certainly has a good idea about ways to fix our health care system. It's just a shame that in the health care bill that got crammed down everyone's throat here that my friend from Georgia as well as so many of the doctors here were not allowed any real meaningful input. And it is interesting, as we think about the health care bill that was supposed to do so much, and you consider it in light of the Speaker's comments, that we need to pass the bill so we can find out what's in it. Well, we're beginning to find out more and more. Now, some of us read through the 1,000-page bill. We read through the 2,000- page bill, and when we got this one between 2,000 and 3,000 pages, frankly, I put off going through that. I knew there wasn't going to be much sleep for a while while I was trying to get through that, and I think I got through about all but about 300 pages. It's tough sledding, though, of course when you are reading through a bill that references other sections and subsections and including other laws that unless you actually go look them up, then it's hard to really get a grasp. Since I have been a judge and dealt with law most of my adult life, sometimes you can pick up things others don't realize. But it really is heartbreaking to realize as more and more people get into this new so-called health care bill just how much damage is being and will be done. You don't cut $500 billion from Medicare and not end up having seniors that don't get the care they need. You don't end up increasing taxes by $500 billion, like this did, and not hurt job creation in this country. I heard a comment just today from someone who's not a Member of Congress, is an economist. He said, You can't love jobs and hate the people that create them. And that seems to be what we're dealing with. We've got a health care bill that punishes employers. If you dare try to provide health insurance for your employees, then you're going to actually end up paying more than you ever dreamed you would. If you don't pay for health care for your employees, if you have more than 50 employees, you're going to be paying $2,000 per employee, and that's going to get pretty expensive. It's not going to help them one whit with their health insurance. But we have done so much damage to jobs, it's just unbelievable. And I am getting more calls and emails into my office from people that are shocked because they thought once the ObamaCare bill went through, all of a sudden they would magically get health care like they never had before. Now what people are going to get for the next few years is a lot of extra taxes, $500 billion in extra taxes, and that's not going to be good for the economy. But as we approach the end of the year, a number of economists have pointed out, things should start picking up the rest of the year if the government doesn't keep interfering and creating problems as it has been because the economy wants to improve itself if we will just let it. But especially the next 6 months, things should be improving because when we get to January 1, 2011, there are going to be the biggest tax increases in American history. January 1 of 2011, it's coming. And we have seen over and over, you want to hurt the economy, then just have a big tax increase. Our friends across the aisle constantly enjoy saying it is tax cuts that got us into this problem. It is not; it is the spending that went out of control. When the Republicans had Congress from 1995 to 2000, it is the Congress that got a balanced budget. The President doesn't pass a budget. He proposes one. His wasn't used. The Congress came up with a balanced budget. And despite President Clinton kicking and screaming, he finally came along and signed off on the bill, and we had a balanced budget. The problem came when we had a Republican President and Republican House and Senate. You had Republicans get giddy and start thinking, gee, maybe the Democrats are right and you can show compassion by throwing money at a problem. You can spoil a child by doing that if you are a parent. You can destroy people's desire to work. I wish more could have benefited from the exchange program from which I learned so much in 1973. There were eight Americans that were allowed into the Soviet Union that summer on that program. At one point the eight of us were out at a collective farm about 30 miles from Kiev in Ukraine, and I was amazed because the fields looked terrible. I am from east Texas and there is a lot of farming and ranching. I have worked on a lot of farms. I could not believe how bad their fields were. They were just pitiful. It looked like nobody had been working out there. The sun was eating them up, and they weren't doing anything about it. The fields were overgrown with weeds. Anyway, all of the farmers in mid-morning were sitting in the shade. I spoke some Russian back then, and I put together some words and tried to nicely say in Russian, When do you work? And they laughed. One of the guys said, in Russian, I make the same number of rubles if I am here or I am out there in the field, so I am here. Well, there is your lesson on communism. When you end up paying people the same thing if they are working and sweating and killing themselves to grow crops, or if they are sitting in the shade, laughing, cutting up with their friends, they are going to sit in the shade and laugh and cut up with their friends. It is going to happen. That is why communism has never worked and it will never work. The Pilgrims tried a form of it out of a Christian thought--if we bring everything in a common storehouse and share things. Even the New Testament Church at one time tried that, and it resulted in the Apostle Paul saying: Okay, new rule; you don't work, you don't eat. The Pilgrims had to do something similar, and they got to a really novel concept: How about if we just give everybody your own private property, it is yours to do with as you wish, but you eat what you grow. You have excess, you can trade it, barter, whatever, use it to buy other things. What a novel idea, giving people private property and letting them be rewarded by the sweat of their brow instead of rewarding their neighbor. Many people think that, and as a Christian I don't seek to ram my beliefs into someone else, but as a Christian if you care you would like for people to understand what is at risk. But I hear Christians here on the floor who have spoken up and said, You know, Jesus said, as you have done to the least of these, my children, you have done to me. He said we are to help the widows and orphans. He said we are to help the less fortunate. I was naked and you clothed me. I was hungry and you fed me. Where is that compassion in here? What they misunderstand is that Jesus never said go thee therefor, use and abuse your taxing authority, take somebody else's money, and do your charitable work. He meant for you to do it with your own money, your own effort, not go take from somebody else and legalize your stealing from somebody else so you give to your favorite charity. That is not what he intended. He knew in an orderly society you would have need of government. You would need courts. That is why Romans 13 talks about the role of government. If you do evil, be afraid, because the government is supposed to be fair. But fairness is not taking in a form of legalized stealing, taking somebody else's money to give to your favorite charity. That is why after Zacchaeus met Jesus, the first thing he did was go and cut taxes. Fact is he even created a 4 to 1 rebate for those from whom he improperly took tax money. But you don't hear that kind of talk a whole lot here; you hear you guys are heartless and uncaring. When you think about eagles or birds, it seems so mean and uncaring for a mother to shove that bird out of the nest and force them to learn to fly. It seems mean. It seems uncaring. But unless they do that, they are never going to learn to fly. There are people who could fly in this country, figuratively speaking, and yet the government keeps pushing just enough money into their hands to keep them subsisting and just enough money to keep them beholden to the big master here in Washington. It is as if there are people here in this city who want people across America to see us in Congress as the big master. And you are the slave. You are the servant. We want you beholden to us. That's not what this Nation was founded on. This Nation was founded on the ideas, and you read them and hear them if you study history--I had wonderful history teachers, and it breaks my heart to hear people who don't understand where we came from and the basis for this country. But it was not to lure people into subsistence and dependence on the government. That was never the purpose. It was to inspire people. It was to give them liberty and freedom and say you can be anything you want to be. And some of us were blessed to have parents who loved us and would say that: you can be anything you want to be. And now today, unfortunately, surveys are showing, indicating 70 percent of American adults, first time in our history, are saying we don't believe our children are going to have the opportunities and liberties, the life as good as we have had it. That is tragic. And that is why some of us ran for Congress, because we are going to do everything in our power to prevent that from happening, so our children can have an even better life, better liberty, better freedoms than we had. It can still happen, but it cannot happen when this government is determined to make people completely reliant on it. One of the things that drove me to run for Congress, to leave the judicial bench, was I knew judges were not supposed to legislate, and I didn't. Sometimes I didn't like the laws I had to follow, but if we were going to have a rule of law in this country, judges have to follow the laws, and I did. But it was seeing how many examples over and over presented themselves that had indications that government lured these people away from their God-given potential and into ruts from which they could not extricate themselves, with no hope of getting out unless they committed a crime. That's the way it would look to them. How did we get so far afield from the foundation of this Nation that inspired people to reach their heights? And I understand, I mean we're all affected by how we're raised and the people that had an impact on our lives. And I am sure there are those in America who, if they came from a broken home, there are even people who have been given everything with a silver spoon who would seem to have come from nothing and yet had the best schools all the way up, had the greatest things. And I can understand if somebody has been given everything their whole life that they've ever wanted that they would think, Well, we need to do that for other people because, look at me, I've reached the top and, you know, I had everything given to me. I never really had a real job, never really had to work to earn things for myself. Everything was given to me, so let's just give everything to everybody else. Unfortunately, we come back to the quote I read earlier, ``You can't love jobs and hate the people who create them.'' It doesn't work. And jobs are not created for very long by government without hurting the private sector, meaning eventually the government takes over everything, provides the jobs. And there's no better example of where that goes than we had in the Soviet Union. Eventually, just like the Pilgrims, just like the New Testament church, people in leadership realize we've made a mess. Now, the question is: Can we get back on track? It was one of the Caesars that realized providing bread and circuses had made the people lazy, they were unproductive, and it was destroying the Roman Empire. And he tried to do away with bread and circuses to push people, as the mother eagle does, push the baby out of the nest so it will be forced to fly. Unfortunately, when you have made them dependent for so long, for too long, they don't fly. They start rioting in the streets. They don't reach their potential. They start destroying what others have and what others have created for themselves, and you eventually destroy the society. They had to reinstate the bread and circuses, and they knew there was no way to avoid the eventual end because people had become too dependent on government. Phil Gramm used to say, when you got one more in the wagon than pulling the wagon, the wagon's going to stop. We've gone from 39 percent of U.S. adults not paying income tax now approaching 50 percent. And when we get over 50 percent, if those people that do not pay any taxes all vote, then we're done for, because you'll have people picking the leaders, just as has been predicted thousands of years ago, you will have people selecting the leaders based on how much they will be promised from the public treasury, and the public treasury will go broke. And then you are put to the situation that the Soviet Union had. You can't print it fast enough to get out of debt. You can't borrow enough to sustain you any longer, so you have to announce this country is out of business. We're done. And that's where this country is going. My friends across the aisle in 2005 and 2006 who complained bitterly about deficit spending were right. We should not have been deficit spending. It's a big reason that our friends across the aisle won the majority. But in the 4 years since, nearly 4 years, we have gone, in one case, a $160 billion budget to a $1.6 trillion budget. They said the right things. I thought they believed them. You've got to stop deficit spending. Yet here after the majority shifted, we have found ourselves with 10 times the deficit that we were beat up for, properly, 4 or 5 years ago. The deficits have to stop. We are destroying this country. You look back at what President Reagan did, had a great economist, Art Laffer. And he had said you need a 30 percent tax cut. If you will cut taxes 30 percent, you will see this economy explode. Unfortunately, that 30 percent tax cut was put in place over a 3-year period. In 1981, there was only like a 1\1/2\ percent tax cut; in 1982, a 10 percent tax cut; in 1983 about a 20 percent tax cut. So just as Laffer predicted, when he got so troubled when he heard that it was going to be phased in over 3 years, he said 1981 and 1982 are going to be disastrous, 1983, when the full tax cut comes through, it will be terrific. And that's what happened, and that's how President Reagan got a second term. The big tax cuts came through. The problem was deficit spending did not stop. And it's carried on even today, with that brief interim. When the serious Republicans took the majority, 1995 to 2000, they balanced the budget. But we've got to get back to that or those 70 percent of American adults who think their kids will not have it as good as they did, they will end up being right. Now, look at some of the judgment that is being utilized these days. You have people that say they believe in the law, and yet you had a Federal judge say you can't act arbitrarily and capriciously and just ban all offshore drilling even among people who are doing everything right. You know, I betcha if the Federal Government had said we are going to have a moratorium on our dear friends, the big Democratic contributors from a company called British Petroleum, if we just have a moratorium on British Petroleum offshore rigs, there would have been a basis, because we knew, it appears at least, that they cut some corners. And the more you find out, the more you realize they kind of felt like somebody here in Washington had their back. They were working with this administration, with the Democratic majority, particularly in the Senate, to pass a number of bills that most people think were not a good idea. But the TARP bill, British Petroleum supported that. The stimulus bill. Most people think, you know, oh, these big oil companies, they are all Republican. Well, if you look, just like Wall Street, Wall Street gives about four to one to Democrats over Republicans. And with British Petroleum, they were working so closely with the administration and with Democrats in the majority, as one article talks about, Senator Kerry communicating with, working with British Petroleum to try to pass the crap-and-trade bill at the very time that the Deepwater Horizon blew out. It is beginning to appear that British Petroleum used a cheap way of drilling in such deep water. It shouldn't have been used in such deep water. That is what is beginning to emerge, it appears may be the case, and that it seems like there was almost an attitude that we don't have to worry; we're big buddies with the White House and with the majority. They've got our backs; we can cut corners. We find out Minerals Management Service sent out their two-man unionized father-and-son team to be the last team of offshore inspectors that inspected the Deepwater Horizon. There's certainly plenty of anecdotal stories about how the inspections were not occurring as they should and there were gifts changing hands, all kinds of problems. We find out that a lady who was in the Clinton administration that actually signed the notices about the deepwater leases, offshore leases, back in '99 and '98, that pulled the price adjustment language, which has now apparently cost our country billions of dollars from its Treasury where they should have gone to big companies like British Petroleum. It turns out that lady went to work for British Petroleum for 8 years, from 2001 until 2009; and then in June of 2009 she came back to work for Minerals Management Service, even though we heard from the Deputy Secretary of the Interior, oh, yeah, we've recused her from areas where she may have a conflict. Give me a break. From British Petroleum? No wonder they thought somebody here in Washington, their Democratic majority friends, the White House, had their back, so they could go cheaply, they could cut corners and make extra profit because they were in with the powers that be here in Washington. They were in. They were in favor of the crap-and-trade bill. They had supported TARP. They had supported the stimulus. And this administration loved having a big oil company that supported them on this stuff so that they could tout that. So, sure, BP thought they had their back covered. And it was only when, after a number of weeks when it became very clear that the American public was furious, appropriately, at British Petroleum, that the administration realized they needed to throw them under the bus, and so they finally did. But what better thing to do, if you're going to hurt one of your friends by throwing them under the bus, then just hurt all the oil companies so that they're all hurt equally, except, of course, the one we heard on television that may be George Soros' biggest individual investment, over $900 million to drill offshore Brazil. We loaned them $2 billion from this country even though we won't drill our own stuff and have a moratorium. In this article about the deepwater drilling ban and the Federal judge, Feldman, that lifted it, this article, and this was from Bloomberg, indicates that Judge Feldman granted a preliminary injunction halting the moratorium and immediately prohibited the U.S. from enforcing the ban. Government lawyers told Feldman the ban was based on findings in a U.S. report following the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig off the Louisiana coast in April. But then Judge Feldman, after he reviewed that, said: ``The court is unable to divine or fathom a relationship between the findings and the immense scope of the moratorium.'' The quote continues: ``The blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger.'' I bet if they had just only imposed a moratorium on this administration's former dear friend and the majority, particularly in the Senate, British Petroleum, then that moratorium probably would have held, because there are, seem to be, indications they were cutting corners. Judge Feldman said this, also: ``The court cannot substitute its judgment for that of the agency, but the agency must, quote, cogently explain why it has exercised its discretion in a given manner.'' Judge Feldman then says ``it has not done so'' and that it must be ``immediately prohibited'' in order to avoid ``irreparable harm.'' And then what seemed to be offensive even more so from this administration was announcing that there would be an appeal even before the opinion was read. It's as if this administration really and truly does not care about the law. We saw that with the auto task force. Their bankruptcy laws say there have to be time for alternative plans for reorganization, secured creditors take the first, unsecured creditors take last and least. Those laws were turned, just thrown out by an auto task force meeting in the White House, appointed by the President, without any confirmation from the Senate, without any input from Congress. We couldn't even find out what was discussed in those meetings. They just threw aside the bankruptcy law, threw aside the Constitution that says before you can take property there must be due process, threw all those laws to the side, completely dismembered the Constitution and the bankruptcy laws and found a bankruptcy judge. Perhaps since they have to be reappointed, it's not a lifetime, this bankruptcy judge was hoping to be reappointed as a bankruptcy judge, perhaps he was hoping for a lifetime appointment, but the judge signed off on it. Clearly illegal. The Supreme Court should have stopped it but apparently the administration scared enough of the Supreme Court judges that if they held up this bankruptcy plan and the sale to an Italian, an inferior car company, then all people in the car business would lose their jobs, and they used scare tactics and got even the Supreme Court to overtly walk away from the Constitution and ignore it. And this is the kind of thing we see now. They won't even read the opinion of the judge to see if it makes sense, just simply announces we're going to appeal. But then again, what would you expect from an administration that didn't have the decency to call the Governor of Arizona and say, you know what, Governor, we owe you an apology. We are so sorry. We should have been doing our job as a Federal Government. We should not have allowed 75 percent of gang members who are violent in this country to be here illegally. We shouldn't have allowed illegals to destroy wilderness area national parks and put people at life and liberty at risk, property at risk. We shouldn't have allowed that to happen to Arizona. We should have done our job, and we're sorry. Oh, no, that didn't happen. Instead, the Secretary of State was sent to Ecuador to tell Ecuador, since I guess the administration thinks we owe Ecuador more than we do one of the 50 States, of the U.S. citizens, we owe more to Ecuador apparently, so they were told about the lawsuit that would be forthcoming against Arizona's law from people who announced without ever reading the law that it was a terrible thing, it was racist, it was profiling; and they had not even read the law. You know, it's scary. It's really scary what's going on around here when the law doesn't matter. I never thought I would see a time in our country's history like this when the law just didn't matter. ``We're in power.'' I really enjoy Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox, but I heard him say the other night, What's wrong with the President's bringing in a company CEO and having the Attorney General there, who has already announced he is investigating them? He wants to charge them with a crime, and have him sitting there for no other reason, obviously, than to intimidate the CEO of British Petroleum and to get them to fork up a $20 billion fund. There is a reason that one man in this country is not supposed to have that kind of authority to extort money. Bill O'Reilly said, oh, he thought it was fine. In fact, he would even go in with a machine gun and force them to give up that kind of money. I hope and pray he got carried away when he made that comment and that he really doesn't believe that, because what that would be saying is, when someone does something as hideous as what British Petroleum has done here--taking lives, wounding, injuring people, destroying landscape, destroying vast areas--it's okay if you become a criminal if they have been so very negligent. It's not okay to let someone's negligence force you into becoming a criminal. We've got to be above those things, and we've got to follow the law. There are laws that say you cannot abuse your office by threatening prosecution unless someone does something financially that you direct. Anyway, these are just amazing times when smart, people, with wisdom on most occasions, are letting that go to the wind as a result of some heinous negligence--and maybe at some point we'll find out--some criminally negligent activity, as we've seen from British Petroleum. We owe it to Arizona and the people of the United States to enforce the borders. There are people coming into this country who want to destroy our way of life. I talked to a retired FBI agent who said that one of the things they are looking at are terrorist cells overseas which have figured out how to game our system. It appears they would have young women who would become pregnant. They would get them into the United States to have a baby, and they wouldn't even have to pay anything for the baby. Then the babies would return back where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists. Then one day 20, 30 years down the road, they could be sent in to help destroy our way of life because they would have figured out how stupid we've been in this country to allow our enemies to game our system, to hurt our economy, to get set up in a position to destroy our way of life. Yet we won't do anything about it. We'll even sue a State that tries to do something about it. We have a national park down on the Arizona-Mexico border that now has signs posted to warn American citizens not to go into the area because it is being used by people illegally there. You know, it's kind of like those spaces in roads where a city just doesn't want to spend the money to fix a hole or a bump. So, instead of fixing the problem, they'll just stick up a sign, saying, ``Bump.'' That's what we're doing. We have got a problem. People are putting life and limb and sacred fortunes at risk, and all we're doing is putting up a sign saying that this is a dangerous area and that you probably don't want to come over here. Let's see. This is an article from Fox News, authored by Joshua Rhett Miller. Anyway, in quoting from the article: ``Roughly 3,500 acres of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge-- about 3 percent of the 118,000-acre park--have been closed since October 6, 2006, when U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials acknowledged a marked increase in violence along a tract of land that extends north from the border for roughly three-quarters of a mile. Federal officials say they have no plans to reopen the area.'' We've just got to let the illegal, violent people have that property, and U.S. citizens can't use it. It has been closed. The article reads, ``Elsewhere, at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which shares a 32-mile stretch of the border with Mexico, visitors are warned on a federally run Web site that some areas are not accessible by anyone. ``Due to our proximity to the international boundary with Mexico, some areas near the border are closed for construction and visitor safety concerns,'' the Web site reads. We're not going to fix the bump in the road. We're just going to put up a sign that says, ``Bump.'' Well, why don't you spend the money that's being spent on the sign to stop the problem? Instead, States like Arizona are driven to try to protect themselves. Now, we have got an area down there, a wilderness area in this park, the Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, with a 32-mile stretch. It is wilderness area, so you can't even drive a vehicle. Border Patrol can't drive a vehicle into that area. A helicopter can't land in that area. Border Patrol is not allowed to adequately do their job there. How crazy is that? It's because we've got massive numbers of illegals--some violent, as we've found out--coming in there, doing damage and putting our Nation at risk. Instead, we declare it off limits to our own people. You can't keep a country going when you have that little regard for the country's future safety and current safety. It's interesting, too. Under U.S. law, the Border Patrol can go onto private land along the U.S. border with Mexico or Canada. It can go in up to 25 miles away from the border to do their jobs except in this national park area. They're not allowed to go in to do their job there. That's why I've prepared a bill that would direct the Secretary of the Interior or Border Patrol--and this is the way it works in this country, in this government. The law is we have to have a study done to see what would be an appropriate amount of land before we would be allowed to transfer it. This bill would require that a study be completed to determine the buffer area needed to allow for border protection and for environmental protection on lands administered by the Department of the Interior along the border of Arizona and Mexico. Then they'd have to come back very quickly. I put in 6 months. They want to have 2 years normally. We haven't got that kind of time. They'd come back and tell us how much would be appropriate to convey over, away from the park, so that we could adequately control our border. It's the only thing that makes sense in that regard, and I'm hoping that many of my colleagues will sign onto that bill. Another thing we've done here is we, today, passed a bill making tougher sanctions regarding Iran. They are tougher sanctions, and that's a good thing. The trouble is it has taken so long to get sanctions in place and the centrifuges in Iran have been spinning for so long that, according to the IAEA, they have enough nuclear material to make two bombs now. Well, let's think about that. I have a resolution here, and I'm hoping, Madam Speaker, that we will have people who will get on board. I think I've got around 50 cosponsors, but there is no reason that most of the Congress should not be sponsoring this bill, so I would submit the following, and this is from the bill that has been crafted and that I am proposing. The whereases are as follows: Whereas, with the dawn of modern Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people some 150 years ago, the Jewish people determined to return to their homeland in the Land of Israel from the lands of their dispersion; Whereas, in 1922, the League of Nations mandated that the Jewish people were the legal sovereigns over the Land of Israel and that legal mandate has never been superceded; Whereas, in the aftermath of the Nazi-led Holocaust from 1933 to 1945, in which the Germans and their collaborators murdered 6 million Jewish people in a premeditated act of genocide, the international community recognized that the Jewish State, built by Jewish pioneers, must gain its independence from Great Britain; Whereas, the United States was the first Nation to recognize Israel's independence in 1948, and the State of Israel has since proven herself to be a faithful ally of the United States in the Middle East; Whereas, the United States and Israel have a special friendship based on shared values, and together share the common goal of peace and security in the Middle East; Whereas, on October 20, 2009, President Barack Obama rightly noted that the United States-Israel relationship is a ``bond that is much more than a strategic alliance''; Whereas, the national security of the United States, Israel, and allies in the Middle East face a clear and present danger from the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran seeking nuclear weapons and the ballistic missile capability to deliver them; Whereas, Israel would face an existential threat from a nuclear weapons-armed Iran; Whereas, President Barack Obama had been firm and clear in declaring United States opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran, stating on November 7, 2008, ``Let me state--repeat what I stated during the course of the campaign. Iran's development of a nuclear weapon, I believe, is unacceptable.'' If I might interject here, this bill was drafted to be extremely bipartisan to show that people on both sides of the aisle have the same concerns. We've just got to get people signed on as cosponsors so that we can get this to the floor for a vote. But going back to the resolution: Whereas, on October 26, 2005, at a conference in Tehran called ``World Without Zionism,'' Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, ``God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism''; Whereas, The New York Times reported that during his October 26, 2005, speech, President Ahmadinejad called for ``this occupying regime--Israel--to be wiped off the map''; Whereas, on April 14, 2006, Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, ``Like it or not, the Zionist regime, Israel, is heading toward annihilation''; Whereas, on June 2, 2008, Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, ``I must announce that the Zionist regime--Israel--with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion, and betrayal, is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene''; Whereas, on June 2, 2008, Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, ``Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come, and the countdown to annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started''; Whereas, on May 20, 2009, Iran successfully tested a surface-to- surface long-range missile with an approximate range of 1,200 miles-- which, by the way, if it were on a ship off the Texas coast could get it up to the middle of the country, 300 miles up, and which if exploded, as well-known among those who have looked at the issue, would create an electromagnetic pulse, an EMP, which some experts have told us will fry every computer chip in the country, and indications are even Wal-Mart would not be able to sell a product. Electricity would not be generated. It just is important to note what 1,200 miles means. Whereas, Iran continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons; Whereas, Iran has been caught building three secret nuclear facilities since 2002; Whereas, Iran continues its support of international terrorism, has ordered its proxy Hezbollah to carry out catastrophic acts of international terrorism such as the bombing of the Jewish AMIA Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1994, and could give a nuclear weapon to a terrorist organization in the future; Whereas, Iran has refused to provide the International Atomic Energy Agency with full transparency and access to its nuclear program; Whereas, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1803 states that according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, ``Iran has not established full and sustained suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities and heavy water-related projects as set out in Resolution 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006), and 1747 (2007), nor resumed its cooperation with the IAEA under the Additional Protocol, nor taken the other steps required by the IAEA Board of Governors, nor complied with the provisions of Security Council Resolution 1696 from 2006, 1737 from 2006, and 1747 from 2007 . . . ''; Whereas, at July 2009's G-8 Summit in Italy, Iran was given a September 2009 deadline to start negotiations over its nuclear programs, and Iran offered a 5-page document lamenting the ``ungodly ways of thinking prevailing in global relations,'' and included various subjects but left out any mention of Iran's own nuclear program, which was the true issue in question; Whereas, the United States has been fully committed to finding a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear threat, and has made boundless efforts seeking such a resolution and to determine if such a resolution is even possible; And, whereas, the United States does not want or seek war with Iran, but it will continue to keep all options open to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons: Now, therefore, be it resolved that the House of Representatives: Condemns the government--number one, condemns the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran for its threats of ``annihilating'' the United States and the State of Israel, for its continued support of international terrorism, and for its incitement of genocide of the Israeli people; Two, supports using all means of persuading the Government of Iran to stop building and acquiring nuclear weapons; Three, reaffirms the United States' bond with Israel and pledges to continue to work with the Government of Israel and the people of Israel to ensure that their sovereign nation continues to receive critical economic and military assistance, including missile defense capabilities needed to address the threat of Iran; and Four, expresses support for Israel's right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran, defend Israeli sovereignty, and protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within a reasonable time. Now, that's what we should have passed today instead of sanctions because the sanctions have not been productive, the centrifuges continue to turn, and Ahmadinejad continues to make threats. Another thing that's been going on is the snubbery of Israel by this administration and the incredibly hurtful vote with Israel's enemies to force them to open up and reveal their most powerful defenses, similar to what Hezekiah did back 2,000 years before there was a Mohammed-- back, unfortunately, as Helen Thomas never had anybody kind enough to teach her the truth, the historic truth. Thousands of years before Mohammed, Hezekiah was in Israel--well, I guess not quite 2,000 years. But after he showed the Babylonians his treasure and all his defenses, Isaiah came and said, Because of this, everything they have seen will be taken away. You don't show your enemies all of your defenses, your strongest defenses because they'll figure out a way to defeat them. And because this administration has been rather rude to Prime Minister Netanyahu-- there's a letter that I'm hopeful, Mr. Speaker, that Members will join in signing, bipartisan, Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid. The letter simply, bipartisan in nature, says: ``This letter is to simply state the obvious need for the Prime Minister of our dear friend Israel to address a joint session of Congress. He has been here in Washington on numerous occasions but has not addressed a joint session of Congress since 1996. ``In our Nation's history, we have invited over 100 leaders from 50 different countries to speak before joint sessions of Congress. At this time, with the enemies of America and Israel looking for weaknesses in our close relationship, we can show them that Israel is our friend and will be our friend, and we want to hear from its leader, Prime Minister Netanyahu. ``With the magnitude of international events and tensions swirling in recent years and the threat of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, it is desperately important that we show the world the importance of our relationship with Israel by inviting Prime Minister Netanyahu to come address this body. The sooner we extend such an invitation, the more stabilizing it will be. We, the undersigned, urge you to extend the invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu to speak to a joint session of Congress as soon as possible.'' When the enemies of Israel were to see both sides of the aisle standing and applauding the Prime Minister of Israel, the message could not be more clear, but we need to send that message. It needs to be clear. It needs to be unequivocal. People need to know that we support our friend, and there is not a great deal of distance between our two countries. We're close friends. And if I might inquire how much time remains?

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, in closing, let me just refer to this little Bible my aunt says my uncle received going into World War II from the Federal Government when he went in the Army. It has a metal plate on it. It says: ``May the Lord be with you.'' And I realize this will be the last couple of minutes we're in session this week. So these are the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt on the flyleaf: ``The White House, Washington. As Commander in Chief, I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the Armed Forces of the United States. Throughout the centuries, men of many faiths and diverse origins have found in the Sacred Book words of wisdom, counsel and inspiration. It is a fountain of strength and now, as always, an aid in attaining the highest aspirations of the human soul.'' Franklin Roosevelt had a good idea there. And I will commend that, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it's always an honor to be here and to be speaking on the floor where so many who have served this country so honorably and well have done the same thing. I never lose sight of that fact. It gets a little discouraging at times. It's interesting to hear the stimulus is working because that's what George W. Bush was doing. And as I recall, in 2006, the Republicans lost the majority because Democrats convinced them that it was the wrong thing to do. And you know what? The Democrats were right. They appropriately won the majority because, as they said, we should not be deficit spending, you're killing the country, you're killing the economy by running up this kind of debt, and they won the majority in 2006 because they were right. We should not have been deficit spending like that. But that went on. So it's interesting to hear, just 4 short years later, that it turns out that what President Bush was doing and was encouraging to be done is actually the good thing. Though, I still tend to go back and think of those of us on the Republican side who agreed that we needed to get out from under the deficit spending and that we needed to get spending under control. Having compassion and spending money to a deficit level is not the same thing. It's the Federal Government, like a parent, who is just throwing money at their kids, thinking that's going to make them happy and that everybody will be loving and caring. I happen to agree with my friend Jim Dobson, who knows a lot about raising children. He said, You show me a child whose parent never said ``no,'' and I'll show you one messed up kid. More and more, we keep seeing people run to Washington. ``Give us money. Give us money. Yeah, let's don't deficit spend, but give us money.'' It has got to stop. It has got to stop. When the Democrats promised they would stop the deficit spending if they were given the majority in November of 2006, they diagnosed the problem correctly, but then they didn't use the treatment they promised when they took over the majority. It's interesting. I went back, and I found an article and speeches from early 2007 when we were talking about how well the economy was going at that point. Yet, at that time, those who promised to stop the deficit spending instead dramatically increased the deficit spending. It is amazing to see how the economy took a nosedive once the Democrats took the majority. So I didn't plan to talk about the stimulus this evening, but I've heard from enough people who have been begging for us to, please, stop the deficit spending. When the Federal Government runs up such an enormous deficit, they suck up all the capital in the world, and the businesses that would like to hire people can't keep their lines of credit open anymore. You have got this administration's regulators telling banks, Now, you'd better not keep extending that line of credit to that business because, even though it's still hiring people and seems to be doing well and has never missed a payment, we're concerned that maybe someday it will, and you don't want your bank to be under the heightened scrutiny that we will put on it if you keep extending lines of credit to this company. So companies lose their lines of credit. They can't borrow money, and they can't grow their businesses. As we have often seen, if you're not growing, then you're usually dying. So it's just interesting. It's interesting. I've heard my friends on the other side of the aisle yelling and fussing about, you know, a $100-$200 billion deficit in 1 year--that it's just outrageous, that it's unconscionable, and how could we do those kinds of things. They're right. We shouldn't have been deficit spending, but I really expected them to stop. This year, it is expected we'll have a $1.3 to $1.6 trillion deficit by the Federal Government in 1 year. Who would have ever dreamed that the same people who said just some short years ago that a $160 billion deficit was reprehensible would today be saying that 10 times that much of a deficit is really a good thing and that the country is doing better? I don't think there is any better indication of just how well things are going in the private sector than last month, because we got good news. There were 431,000 new jobs created last month. That was great news. 411,000 of the 431,000 jobs were temporary of census workers. I'm not sure that's news that's quite as good as we originally thought. So we have an administration and a majority who are ecstatic in thinking that the emperor, though naked, has regal clothes on and that the economy is doing great and that the stimulus is working so very well because we created 411,000 jobs last month for temporary census workers. That emperor has no clothes on. It's not a great economy. Now, it should be. It's trying to be. It's trying to come back. Yet, as the private sector tries to do better, boom, we hit them with a health care bill that is going to cost them so much more money than it had cost them before. It's telling businesses, if you've got over 50 employees, then you're going to get hammered with a $2,000-per-employee tax. So, you know, we're hearing people say, Well, we had 56. We had to let them go. We had to let people go. We can't be over that cap. We have people being let go because the health care costs are now going to be so much, and the added taxes are hitting. We have people who are selling homes and who are seeing there are going to be added taxes for them. This was supposed to be a health care bill that helped the working poor. Yet, a few weeks ago, when I was at a jobs fair in Marshall, Texas, I had one gentleman tell me, Look, we're giving, you know, entry-level jobs, but we're giving them really good health insurance. Well, unfortunately, once the full extent of this health care bill kicks in, under the bill, he won't be able to do that anymore. They'll have to go on Medicaid. If you make 133 percent of the poverty level or less, under that wonderful bill, you'll get forced into Medicaid, like it or not, even if you've got an employer who is willing to provide you health care. Oh, by the way, if you're above 133 percent of the poverty level and you can't afford the great health insurance policy that is dictated by this Zeus of a Congress and President, then bad news. You're going to pay extra income tax. You can't afford the health care insurance we've mandated? You get an extra income tax. Good news. Good news all the way around. I did want to address something that has caused me a great deal of concern. All of this actually does, but this hit me as I was seeing more information about the 9/11 conspirators. I use that term because they had filed documents indicating that they were 9/11 conspirators. This is an article I saw on Sunday. The headline from Politico, which is a newspaper here in Washington, reads, ``Chances dim for swift 9/11 decision.'' This was by Mr. Josh Gerstein on 6/20/2010. It reads, ``Attorney General Eric Holder said the decision over where to hold the trial for alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was `weeks away' 3 months ago. ``Now advocates on both sides of the issue say they expect the Obama administration to punt the decision until after the November midterm elections--when the controversial plan could do less damage to the political fortunes of endangered Democrats and might face less resistance on Capitol Hill. ``Holder, last week, explicitly denied the midterms had anything to do with the timing but would only say discussions are continuing. The White House had no comment.'' So the article goes on, and it discusses at quite some length the 9/ 11 trial and its problems and about figuring out what to do about it. Then, while I was looking this weekend, I saw some great news. This is from The New York Times. This is exactly quoting from The New York Times' article: ``Five charged in 9/11 attacks seek to plead guilty.'' So they are going to plead guilty. ``Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: The five Guantanamo detainees charged with coordinating the September 11 attacks told a military judge on Monday that they wanted to confess in full--a move that seemed to challenge the government to put them to death.'' Man, that's great news because we had this article on Sunday, saying the Attorney General and this administration can't decide what to do about the trials. It's great news. They're going to plead guilty. Another quote from the article said that at the start of what had been listed as routine proceedings Monday, Judge Henley said he had received a written statement from the five men charged, saying they had planned to stop filing legal motions and to ``announce our confessions to plea in full.'' Great news. They're agreeing to plead guilty to confess everything. Awesome news. Awesome news. The trouble is, the date of this New York Times story was December 9, 2008. The 9/11 conspirators, as they are self-confessed, agreed to plead guilty to the atrocities regarding 9/11. They were not going to file any more pleadings. They were throwing in the towel. They were ready to be sentenced to death. And if you go back and look at this article, Mr. Speaker, it talks about how they're ready to accept martyrdom. Isn't that something? They told a military judge they wanted to confess in full. They were ready to be put to death for their crimes. Isn't that something? It said they planned to stop filing legal motions and to announce our confessions to plea in full. But a strange thing happened on the way to the five 9/11 charged conspirators for plotting and carrying out--seeing that it was carried out, at least--the 9/11 atrocities. This administration took office a month after that story and said, You know what? Basically, in essence, You guys, don't plead guilty. We want to bring this to New York and create a circus out of it. Put the island of Manhattan in great danger. Probably cost them--one estimate was a hundred million dollars they don't have. They're trying to figure out where to come up with the money for their own budget right now. Yes, they're going to bring them to New York and put on a circus. So the guys withdrew their indication they were going to plead guilty. They were ready for the big show. And now we're told that there probably won't be a decision until after the November elections. They were ready to plead guilty, and now we have to wait 2 years because this administration wanted to jump in and make a circus out of justice. You don't do that. It's not justice when you attempt to make a circus out of it. I had a rule in my courtroom. I would allow one camera remain in place, could not be moved, and the moment I saw one juror look over at the camera, the camera was out. Everybody knew the rules. It had to be a pooled camera. So all networks pooled from that one camera. And the first one to file the motion to bring the camera or use the camera were the ones that got to put the stationary camera in there and everybody else pulled footage from those. Because when you're talking about justice, when you're talking about court proceedings, you cannot talk about making a big show out of the trial. It's no longer justice. It's now a circus. And, in the meantime, we have over 3,000 people who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks, who see justice frittering away yet one more time. It's heartbreaking. Heartbreaking. These guys were ready to plead guilty, as announced in this article December 9, 2008, in The New York Times. And now we're talking 2 years later before we ever even think about, figure out what we're going to do. They were ready to plead guilty but for this administration's meddling with the third branch. And for those that think that the Congress does not have the authority to create military commissions, I understand their ignorance--there's a lot of it out there, but that's been going on for years--called the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Because under the Constitution, this body had the authority to create the UCMJ, which we did, long before I was here, of course. But they did. And that's why. Now when the Bush administration tried to create a military commission without coming through Congress, that was not constitutional. That's not the President's job. It's the Congress's job under the Constitution. So when the Congress came back in 2006, created the Military Commissions Act, then it was certainly upheld, because it was appropriate. Of course, in that bill it referred to those who are at war with America as enemy combatants, a term that's been around for at least 70 years. But that got changed last year. We had an amendment to the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The term ``enemy combatant'' has now been changed officially in the act that President Obama signed. We wouldn't want to offend these poor enemy combatants that want to kill us and destroy our way of life. So they're now referred to under the bill as unprivileged alien enemy belligerents. Four words now. Anyway, that's where we are with regard to the 9/11 attackers, the 9/ 11 plotters; and if you go back and read the pleading filed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on behalf of himself and the four others charged that should have pled guilty in January of 2009, but for the intervention by the executive branch through the Department of Justice and the White House, but for their meddling, these guys may well have already been put to death, since that's what they were willing to accept. And I just know that they have a very rude awakening awaiting them in the next life. But, unfortunately, that will not be experienced by them for some time still to come. Really tragic. And then we see not only has there been that interference with the 9/ 11 plotters and the intervention of the White House and the Department of Justice. And, I don't know, maybe the name should be changed from Department of Justice to Department of Procrastinated Justice, because it should have happened by now, but for this group intervening. Then we see what's happened down in the Gulf Coast, what continues to go on. We've got video every second reminding us of that. And the more you read, the more disconcerting it gets. Now we've heard one of the all-time experts on global warming finally admit early this year that, well, actually, there's no evidence of the planet warming since 1995. And, yes, in the last few years it's probably been cooling; and, yes, the Middle Ages were a lot warmer in the Northern Hemisphere than it is here now. Of course, I'm sure it's easy to remember from history the Middle Ages, the Nords, all those folks. They had some pretty high-powered automobiles which are creating all the global warming back in those days. But, apparently, it was such a wonderful thing to this administration and to our friends across the aisle that British Petroleum was onboard with global warming and they were going to, apparently, make a lot of money in the carbon credit business. They were excited about it. And they were the Big Oil advocate teamed up with the Democrats in the Senate and with this administration. And so people wondered why this administration didn't come out much more quickly and condemn British Petroleum. Well, they were still hoping they were going to salvage their crap-and-trade bill. But they also knew if their big ally, British Petroleum, was not onboard, then it might be more difficult to convince others that it was going to be such a good thing for the energy business. So they really didn't want, apparently, to condemn British Petroleum too roundly too quickly because they were still hoping they could salvage a passage of the crap-and-trade bill. And they really at the time thought they needed their ally--their very, very close ally--British Petroleum. And there was an article indicating that in fact Senator Kerry on April 22, when the Deepwater Horizon blew, that Senator Kerry was communicating with British Petroleum about trying to get that global warming bill passed. Things got put on hold, obviously, after that explosion took place. And yet still over 60 days later, the Jones Act has not been suspended, so the Netherlands could come in, as they had offered. They have got some amazing machinery that would help with the separation. They could build island barriers, save so much of the pristine beaches, and still, no Jones Act suspension. Obviously that was a bill to give protectionism to unions, and certainly the unions did not want to see that bill suspended. But for all the criticism of President Bush, within 3 days of Hurricane Katrina occurring--August 29 was when it occurred, September 1 is when President Bush had signed an order suspending the Jones Act so that foreign vessels could come in and assist us in our time of need after Hurricane Katrina. Over 60 days later, this administration still has not done it. So I hear all the talk about, We're doing absolutely everything we can. How about putting a signature on the suspension of the Jones Act? Just do it 19 days like President Bush did, and you'll be able to have all this outside assistance come in. One of the things that I've seen--and it's been hard for me over the years, when somebody wants to come help me after I've had some family tragedy or something, is, I just don't like to accept--I don't want anybody to put themselves out. But what you find out is, if you've done something for somebody else, it blesses their heart when they get to do something nice for you. You know, we have done some very nice things for so many countries, as is reflected in the cemeteries all over Europe, in American soldiers that have been buried around the world, where they gave their lives-- not so that we could be an imperialist nation, because if we were, France would be speaking English, the Netherlands would be speaking English, Germany would be speaking English. But that was never our goal. Japan would be speaking English. That was never our goal. It was a goal to bring liberty and freedom, bring the very gift that we have in this country to others. It's such a wonderful inheritance. But the problem is, though we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, like any inheritance, any gift, if you don't fight for it, then mean, evil people will take it away. So the Jones Act has not been suspended, and we have a fund that was created with--you know, British Petroleum said, We were going to do it anyway. And it sure sounds like, from what we've been hearing, British Petroleum deserves to pay a great deal more than that. But one of the great things the Founders did was create three branches of government so that when a responsible party has done something wrong, you don't have the Congress or the President come in and say, Here's your fine. Here's your fee. This is what you've got to pay. We don't have that. We have hearings and trials in court. And if you want to avoid having a long drawn-out trial process, then you can come in and work out a settlement agreement. Some companies have found out, after they've done wrong and harmed people, that they actually end up better off creating a fund on their own, something that is acceptable to others so that they can be compensated for the harm that's been done without protracted litigation. That's all a very noble thing. Having a fund supplied by British Petroleum, that's a very good thing. But when you take it out of context, of the three branches of government--and this is more a judiciary issue--and you allow either the legislative or the executive branch to just say, Here's what you owe. Put up the money, and we'll appoint our pet person here to dictate who gets what, then you have broken down the Constitution. That's not supposed to happen. Because the same President and Attorney General who sit down with somebody at the very time that they are investigating criminal charges--and they've made a big deal in the media about investigating criminal charges. They said, By the way, we're investigating you. I mean, it goes without saying. They've said it all in the media, We're investigating you for criminal charges. We think you need to put this money up. The same executive branch that can dictate creating a fund like that--no matter how willing the perpetrator is to put up the fund--that same executive branch can also say, And by the way, why don't you just take the blame for everything? Why don't you just take the blame for everything? Let's don't even get into what the government might have done wrong, what our administration didn't do, what our Department of Interior didn't do, what our Minerals Management Service didn't do, or the fact that we just made a big splash in June of 2009 about our deputy assistant secretary coming in to this department who worked for British Petroleum ever since she left the Clinton administration in January of 2001, and never mind that she knows more, according to the previous Inspector General, about why that price adjustment language was cut out of the 1998 and 1999 offshore leases that made--I thought originally hundreds of millions, now apparently it's billions of dollars for her employer, Big Oil. But it cost the Federal Treasury billions of dollars that went to big oil. Let's just avoid all of that discussion about the cozy relationship between this administration's regulators and British Petroleum. Let's just avoid all of that, and you just take all the responsibility. There's a reason that an executive branch is not supposed to do that, because it opens the door to abuse. And, in fact, there are Federal laws--just like I'm familiar with State laws in Texas--that say, basically it's a crime for a prosecutor in Texas to call in a defendant and say, I will not indict you, or I will drop the indictment if you will put x number of dollars into the fund that I dictate. Well, that's a crime. You can't do that. There's a reason that we have three branches of government. I heard someone ask once of the brilliant Justice Antonin Scalia, Don't you think the reason we've had more liberty in this country than any other country in the world is because of our Bill of Rights? And I just love Justice Scalia. He is so brilliant and yet so forthright. He said, no. And I'm sure my answer will not do justice to his. But my recollection is, basically, no. The Soviets had a much better Bill of Rights than we have. And it hit me. I remembered. I studied the Soviets' Bill of Rights, and they actually did. It was a great Bill of Rights. But he said, No. The reason you've got more liberty in America is because the Founders did not trust government, so they wanted to make it as hard as they could for government to pass any laws, to force anybody into anything. You set up three branches as the Founders so that you couldn't just quickly pass a law. And even if you did, you have an executive branch that is elected outside of Congress. So it's not like a prime minister, where we elect one of our own in here to be the leader, similar to a President. We've got an executive branch. And that's not enough. We set up a judicial branch that's appointed in the Federal system so that all of these things would help create gridlock. Today you hear people say, I'm tired of gridlock. The Founders thought it was the best gift they could ever give is a way to clog up the government so they wouldn't rush in and make laws unless they were absolutely necessary. We've gotten away from that. It's gotten too easy. As we saw when the Republicans in 2001 had the White House, House, and the Senate, spending started like it hadn't before. Compassion was equated with giving away money. Whereas, if you go back to 1995, when Republicans took Congress as the majority, finally you started having a balanced budget, because this body creates the budget and the Senate eventually, hopefully, agrees. And then you've got a way to control spending. We had a balanced budget once the Republicans took the majority, and things went great. And it's amazing to me--well, it's humorous, actually, to hear President Clinton taking credit for a balanced budget. He didn't do it. The Congress did. And in some cases, he was brought in kicking and screaming, but the Republican Congress balanced the budget. It wasn't until they got giddy by having their own party in the White House that the brakes came off and spending increased so that we had $100 billion, $200 billion in deficit in 1 year. And that was so outrageous until this last year, when it was over a trillion, and this year maybe as much as $1.6 trillion in 1 year. It's unbelievable. It's really irresponsible. And now we read today in the paper that our majority leader is saying they are giving up all hope of passing a budget, too politically difficult. And as we heard one of the Democratic leaders say in 2006 before they won the majority, if you can't provide a budget, you can't govern. There's a lot of truth in that. So we need to get away from the executive branch being the Congress, being the executive branch and the judicial branch. We saw that with the auto task force. This body created the bankruptcy laws. Bankruptcy is something provided for in the Constitution. But it wasn't created until the early 1800s, where the courts actually set up the system of bankruptcy. And it was set up because the Founders believed that apparently nobody, no business or body should ever be too big to fail. Because if you are failing, you can go through bankruptcy. And, in fact, if you are too big to fail, it is absolutely essential that you go through bankruptcy and reorganize and downsize so you will never put this country at that kind of risk again because you are still too big to fail and, in fact, have gotten even bigger. And that's what we've seen with Goldman Sachs. They've gotten even bigger. They should have been allowed to fail previously. Well, I tell you, there is a brilliant man named Thomas Sowell. And I didn't vote for Barack Obama in 2008, but I sure would have voted for Thomas Sowell. His article says quite a lot. His editorial says here, and it's just been posted this week, but he says, ``When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s,'' and I am quoting from Thomas Sowell in his editorial, ``leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics. Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions. `Useful idiots' was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.'' And this isn't in the article, this is my comment, but we do have useful idiots today who are heard to say, Wow, what we really need is for the President to be a dictator for a little while. They know not what they say. Anyway, back to quoting Thomas Sowell. ``Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive or, ultimately, even survive. In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it. The President's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this Nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies. ``Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a President has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere. And yet that is precisely what's happening,'' and he goes on. And I will tell you, there is a reason we have to rely on the justice system, because if we didn't have that branch of government that could be the final arbiter of disagreements between groups, then there would be people like me who have seen the damage that rushing through, taking the cheaper way to drill in such a difficult area, seen the damage, the loss of lives, those whose lives are still in jeopardy because of their grave injuries, the damage to the environment--and I just drove from New Orleans to Panama City. And there is anticipation of doom and gloom coming to many places, yet those people, the beaches are beautiful. From Panama City through Alabama through Mississippi, they are beautiful. But people aren't showing up to the beaches. They could at least come and enjoy them. But BP just did an unconscionable thing. And if we did not have a justice system, if we were back to the days, as Israel once was, of just having a judge and I were the judge, you know, the tendency would be some people would be horsewhipped that cut corners and did all this damage. But there's a reason we don't have a judicial dictatorship so one man can't say you ought to be horsewhipped for what you have done. What they've done is outrageous. And you can't help but think, because they had such good friends in the administration and in the majority, they thought they were bulletproof. They thought they could do whatever they wanted. And the President, their big buddy, Senator Kerry, the majority, especially in the Senate, they would cover for them. They would take care of them. They didn't know that when they did something this outrageous they would be thrown under the bus. But we should not have one branch that does that kind of dictation. It's not good. It's not good at all. And then we have the problem with Israel being accosted by its enemies, and we are siding with the wrong people. I had a teacher in elementary school. She always took up for the bullies when they beat up the little guys. I know because I was a little guy in elementary school, and she always sided with the big bullies that had flunked a couple of grades and were bigger than the rest of us. I will never forget those guys took my brand-new football I got for Christmas, and I went to get it back and my nose was bloodied, my face was pulverized, but then, as now, I don't run from a fight. And when the teacher was told by other students I was trying to get my nose to stop bleeding, she came into the boy's restroom, grabbed me, took me down to the classroom, marched me in front of the class and said, See, now, class, this is what happens when the little boys try to play with the big boys, Well, that's kind of what's going on here. We've got bullies trying to bully Israel. We're siding with the wrong guys. There will be a price to pay if this continues. Israel's our friend. They have great value for human life, like we do in this country. If they were not in the Middle East, we would spend trillions of dollars trying to protect ourselves in that area from the things that are growing right now. We owe them more than a thank you, and yet the U.S. voted to force them to disclose their nuclear weaponry, if any. You don't do that to friends. It's what Hezekiah did. He showed Babylonians all his armaments, his treasury and Isaiah told him, as a result, it is all going to be taken away. You don't show your enemies all of your defenses because they will figure out a way to overcome them. I was just downstairs, in fact, in a little supper with Shaun Alexander, played football for Alabama, and was MVP with Seattle in the Super Bowl, just a great guy. But he mentioned four verses of scripture that really meant so much to him, and one of those was, he said, Deuteronomy 30:19, and I'm quoting from the most quoted book in this history of the Congress. In fact, our first 150 years, oftentimes our legislators were afraid to file a bill without having some scriptural basis to back it up. But Shaun quoted from Deuteronomy 30:19, I call Heaven and Earth to witness against you today that I've set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants. Verse 20 goes on: By loving the Lord, your God, by obeying His voice and by holding fast to Him, for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land that your Lord swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to give to them. He also quoted from Matthew 5:24, No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other or he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and man. You know, these days, some want to serve a constituent and they get pulled away because they're torn. They'd like to serve a tremendous power in this country, torn between constituent service and power. And then in some cases, as we see here, apparently George Soros has made more money probably than anybody in this country because of British Petroleum and the moratorium and what all has happened there. Of course, this country apparently is standing for $2 billion to help Brazil do deep exploration, and that will make hundreds of millions for Mr. Soros. I'm happy for anybody who make lots of money, but sometimes people in this body are torn between their constituent service or being a part of a powerful team. It's why people in here are often gotten to move their vote one way or the other. I was told that before I got here. One of the hardest things is not when people come to you and say, yes, you're going to do this, you're going to vote this way, because most in this body are stubborn enough to say, no, I'm not going to do that. But where they get you is they say, come on, we thought you were a team player, we want you on our team, we want you one of the good guys on our team. And they hit you up on the team player thing. And so good people in this body, in the Senate, even in the judiciary apparently when they allowed the auto task force, taking without due process in violation of the Constitution, turned bankruptcy upside down. They even convinced the judiciary to even look the other way and let the Constitution and the bankruptcy laws be turned upside down. So there are people who want to be part of the team, you know, and they forget the Constitution; and when that happens we break down what so many have fought and died for to give us this gift. I heard my colleagues in the prior hour talking about how well the stimulus is going. I keep coming back, and Mark Levin quoted this in his book, ``Liberty and Tyranny,'' and it ought to be a textbook, it's so good. But he quotes from Henry Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1939 Secretary Morgenthau was testifying--well, actually he wrote this. He said, We have tried spending money. We have spent more money than we have ever spent before, and now after 8 years, we have an unemployment rate that is just as high today as it was when we started, and we have an enormous debt to boot. Human nature has not changed much since the 1930s. When the government starts spending money, then ultimately you're going to have a choice. You're going to have to keep borrowing or printing, and then ultimately you get in a position the Soviet Union was in. You can't print it fast enough to pay your debts, you can't borrow it fast enough, nobody will loan it to you anymore. So you have to go up and announce you're bankrupt as a nation and out of business. By the way, one other thing I wanted to mention, and this happens when you refuse to enforce the laws. We had a President who just decided he was going to impose a drilling moratorium; and so the judiciary came in, considered the Constitution, considered the action after it viewed all the excuses and everything for imposing it, said this is arbitrary and capricious, you can't do this, there's no basis for a moratorium of all of these. If you want to go after BP--he didn't say this, I'm saying it--you want to go after BP, say they're suspended until you make sure they're not cutting corners on other rigs, because we know they cut them--it sure looks like they cut them at least on Deepwater Horizon, that's one thing. But to do it on all the rigs when indications that we saw somewhere there were 750 safety violations for BP and in the same period I think Exxon, maybe Shell, had one? There's a reason maybe you could justify doing that with a BP rig but not all of them. So the judge struck it down, and here already today the Secretary of the Interior says he's appealing it. Apparently, he likes the idea of having one branch of government run everything. Big mistake. Then, not only that, a lot of folks may not know, Mr. Speaker, but there is, as I understand it, under Federal law the right of the Border Patrol to come into private landowners' land up to 25 miles from the border, anywhere, any of our borders to enforce our border. Everywhere around the border, they have that right up to 25 miles to come into private property if they need to to enforce our border. Well, lo and behold, there is one place they can't, and that's on federally owned property like the national park in Arizona. There is apparently about 32 miles of border with Mexico that's a park that has now been announced to be closed to American citizens because there are too many illegals going across that land and tearing it up, and some have gotten violent and killed even law enforcement people in that area. We can go on private property to protect our border, but we can't go on Federal land? That's outrageous. Rob Bishop has a bill to deal with that, and so do I. Rob has really done great research on this, he has really been the leader in the area of bringing this stuff out. We've got to do something; that is outrageous. We need defense, and we need to give a 25-mile, at least, area to the border patrol to patrol and just say that's not going to be national park wilderness area because our border means too much. We've got people wanting to come in here and destroy our way of life. But I see my time is running shorter now. There were a lot of things I wanted to cover. But there are just so many people who do not understand, Mr. Speaker, where we came from and why there needs to be a firm foundation under this country. President Harry Truman--some may recall he was a Democrat--he said this: ``The fundamental basis of this Nation's laws was given to Moses on the Mount.'' The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that enough these days. If we don't have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State. Boy, was he prophetic. James Madison, given credit for writing the most in the Constitution, he said this on November 20, 1825: ``The belief in a God all powerful, wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities to be impressed with.'' Franklin D. Roosevelt said, ``The skeptics and the cynics of Washington's day did not believe that ordinary men and women had the capacity for freedom and self-government. They said that liberty and equality were idle dreams that could not come true. You know, they are like the people who carp at the Ten Commandments because some people are in the habit of breaking one or more of them.'' A lot of truth then. Patrick Henry said this: ``Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of infidels and idolaters should be a nation of free men. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains.'' So much, so much truth in our heritage. And I just want to conclude with this, Thomas Jefferson's own words: ``God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God, that they are not to be violated but with his wrath. Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and his justice cannot sleep forever.'' This government is not God, and the only protection from those who think they might begin to be is the enforcement of the three branches of government and their separate powers, and we've got to get back to that to save this Nation. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. When we talk about Wall Street, one of the things that really gets me is, if you look at the numbers and why there wasn't more reform of Wall Street, what we find out is that actually both to the Obama campaign running for President and to our friends across the aisle, the executives on Wall Street, despite what sometimes seems the conventional wisdom, the executives on Wall Street give to the Democrats and to the Obama campaign four to one over Republicans. It's an amazing thing to see. And if you look at that, then you begin to understand a little better why there may be games being played, but there was no real reform of Wall Street that was going on. And that also brings up the issue of British Petroleum. Some might wonder, why in the world would the President of the United States wait all these weeks--week after week after week after week--to even meet with British Petroleum, to even call them down. Well, they've gotten pretty rough on them here lately in talking. But actually, it turns out the more you dig--it's kind of like Wall Street--it turns out British Petroleum was this administration's greatest ally in fighting what was an invented problem: Global warming. It turns out the planet may have been cooling in the last few years. The snow down in South Africa recently points toward that as well. But British Petroleum was meeting with Senator Kerry, and they were pushing this global warming bill. They needed an oil company to help get this ridiculous bill that was being pushed, the so-called energy bill, they needed an oil company to give them credibility. So, of course, they didn't want to come down on them. Of course, they want to talk about Wall Street and getting tough on the fat cats, but as far as doing anything, it's just talk. That's why Goldman Sachs had their biggest profit in their whole company's history last year as the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the White House. And I'm trying to dig. We found some contracts, but I would like to know just how much of that was government money coming from this Congress and this administration into the coffers still of Goldman Sachs. It's still flowing there. And the contracts indicate that. As far as the oil spill, you've got companies and countries around the world willing to help. President Bush, for all the criticism, actually within 3 days of the Katrina hurricane, had suspended the Jones Act so foreign countries could send ships and send help and go ahead and give us all the assistance they could. This administration still has not suspended the Jones Act. We had the Netherlands within days--man, they know something about building barrier islands and dikes and things like that. This administration said, Oh, no. We don't want that, allowing millions and millions and millions of dollars to pile up. And then you look in a little deeper, and you find out, Oh, gee. After the President said that about the cozy relationship that existed between big oil and the regulators, it turns out the very person that we were told by the Inspector General who knew the most about that price adjustment language being pulled out of offshore leases in 1998-1999 left the Clinton administration when they went out; so they couldn't really talk to them to investigate what had happened. It turns out, she works now with the Department of the Interior, with the Minerals Management. Go figure. There is a mess going on. There are a lot of things we can do to quit killing jobs. Those 700,000 jobs were being lost when the Democrats had this majority, and compassion does not equal giving away money.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, I thank my friend from Iowa so much. In fact, I had some dear friends--and I, actually, have them here present--one whom my wife and I taught in Sunday school 20 years or so ago and who is here with her mom. Anyway, she was saying she really enjoyed Steve King's Special Orders, and so I thought I might pass that on. I also had heard my friend mention the Jones Act and how President Bush was able to suspend it. It's interesting, when you put things in perspective, how sometimes they appear different. Back at the time that Hurricane Katrina hit, some people thought he waited too long. Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, 2005. On September 1, President Bush suspended the Jones Act so foreign ships could come in and help. They helped put people up. They helped bring things that people could use to help clean up. So there was Katrina on August 29. On September 1, he suspended it through September 19. I know there are some who say, well, it probably takes a lot of things. Actually, it has to be signed off on by Customs and Border Protection, by the Department of Energy and by the Maritime Administration. But guess what? Those are all White House appointments, so it's just getting the people who work for him to sign on. That's no big deal. Apparently, the Netherlands offered within a few days of the disaster, of the big blow-out, to bring in equipment, to dredge up and set up, and to create barrier islands. Yet this administration said, No, thank you. Not only didn't he suspend the Jones Act. He said, No, thank you, and sent them on their way. No, we don't want you coming over here. The truth is the Jones Act would be so easy to suspend. Back during these past months, it would have been so easy to suspend. All you'd have to do is to make one phone call; get your staff to have DOE, Customs and Border Protection, and Maritime sign off. Then they could bring it to you, and you could have it right there on the golf course so that when you'd finish the ninth green putting, you could just sign off on suspending the Jones Act before you'd tee off on the tenth tee. It would be that easy to do. In the meantime, if that had been done early on when the Netherlands and England and others volunteered, it would have meant the saving of the livelihoods of thousands upon thousands of people on the gulf coast. It would have meant the saving of wildlife all through those marshes where oil is getting up in there. It would have been a terrific and a tremendous help had they been willing to just tell the unions, Look, we know you don't want the Jones Act suspended. It won't be for long, but we're talking about saving countless lives of wildlife in the area as well as the livelihoods of so many. I don't know if my friend from Iowa has heard, but I read here on the floor an article regarding British Petroleum's relationship with the global warming bill. It makes sense why they would have waited so long to jump on BP, to get mad at them and to say, We've got our feet on their neck, and all this stuff, because it turns out that BP was the one Big Oil company that was signing on to all the global warming stuff. I'm sorry. I say ``global warming,'' but we know, since apparently the planet has started cooling, they've changed the name and have said, Please call it ``climate change,'' because it doesn't do to be pushing global warming bills when it turns out the world may be cooling, as South Africa found out this week with the snow down there. But, anyway, turns out that on April 22, Senator John Kerry, Democrat from Massachusetts, was on the phone with allies in his push for climate legislation and telling them he was rolling out the bill that very day with three oil companies, including British Petroleum. They were supporting him on his climate change, global warming bill, and they were supporting the White House. And so, of course, they were reluctant to jump on the oil company that was being such a big help to them. But what we found is once they saw that the United States was angry and that this was going to be nothing but trouble, well, they were willing to throw their friends under the bus and then talk about boots on their throat and wanting to kick some rear ends. We had a hearing today in our Natural Resources Committee and we had the new Acting Director of Minerals Management Service. We had the new Acting Inspector General of the Department of the Interior, and I was asking that, since we'd had hearings a few years ago on why the price adjustment language was pulled out of the offshore leases in 1998 and 1999--this was a few years ago, the prior Inspector General--the Inspector General said, Well, we can't get to the bottom of why the price adjustment language was pulled out, but clearly, at the time, it had cost our country hundreds of millions--and I'm informed now that that's billions and billions of dollars--that should have gone as revenue from the offshore rigs but has gone into the pockets of some of the big oil companies that executed those lists in 1998-1999. And it turns out, the Inspector General said, But I haven't been able to question the two people with the most information--because they could probably explain this--because they're no longer with the government. And I said, Well, where are they? They're not with the government. Well, why can't you call them? They're not with the government. When you're talking about hundreds of millions and now billions of dollars, you would think they would want to know their version of what happened. Because if there's billions and billions of dollars that have gone to Big Oil that should have gone in our Federal Treasury because it should have been royalty if these people had not pulled that language out of those leases, then you would figure somebody would want to know if they got something in return for that. What made you pull that language? Because the best we could tell from hearing a few years ago, it appeared they were given information that, Look, the language is not in here on price adjustment. Don't you want that in there? And they never talked to them. They weren't with the government anymore. Well, it turns out one of the two had gone to work for a company-- perhaps you've heard of them--called British Petroleum. Went there in 2001, when the Clinton administration left, and served in different positions; one as director of British Petroleum Shipping Limited in London, vice president for British Petroleum North America in L.A., and also one other position with BP before she came back. So I asked the Acting Inspector General, Now that we have found out that Ms. Baca is back with the Interior Department, now you surely have asked her why that language was pulled out. What did she say? Oh, I didn't know she was part of any of that. And what struck me, and call me cynical, but we found the press release from Interior, June of 2009. How ironic. That's 10 years after the 1998-1999 leases during the Clinton administration had that language pulled out. Ten years later, she comes out from British Petroleum and goes to work for the Interior Department for Minerals Management. It's really interesting because, well, 10 years. That always rings a bill. Oh, yeah. Unless it's murder, the statute of limitations is normally a maximum of 10 years, unless anything. So that's probably good news if there was anything that went wrong back there, that was done that shouldn't have been done. Ten years. So just answer the question. Why did you pull that language out before you went to work for British Petroleum and helped big oil companies make so much money? So that's a matter of concern, continues to be a matter of concern. I did ask the Acting Director of MMS, since we know that the only entity within Minerals Management that is allowed to be unionized is the offshore inspectors, I asked, Now, we know you're dividing MMS up into three groups, three parts. The prior Director had indicated that she didn't know if they might all unionize or not, didn't really know. So I asked the new Acting Director. He didn't know. That may happen. Now, there's only one little part of MMS that's unionized--the offshore inspectors. Now they may unionize all of those, and they'll have three different agencies to do it with. So that was interesting to find out today. And when I asked if he thought it was a good idea that a father and son team were the last two inspectors to go out to Deepwater Horizon before the blowout, he said he didn't seem to see anything wrong with it being a father and son. I'm going, This is your check and balance. This is what we were told. This ensures that both inspectors are doing their job, because they know the other is watching them and will report them if they don't do their job. And he didn't have a problem with that being father and son, didn't see that that was a problem. I'm telling you, Mr. Speaker, when the heads of these agencies don't see a father and son as a problem being the last two inspectors to go to Deepwater Horizon and they are their own checks and balances to make sure that those inspections are properly done, we've got a problem. And it's not British Petroleum. They're one problem, and they need to be dealt with--and should be. Because we've already seen the administration now willing to throw their good friends under the bus. But we do need to clean up this cozy relationship that the President's talked about and that he helped create in the Minerals Management Service. I yield to my friend from Iowa.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on what my friends were discussing because this oil spill is so important. And when our colleagues across the aisle control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the most we can do is use this honored place here to bring out some points so that, hopefully, America will respond, let their Members of Congress know what can be done, what should be done, and why. And then perhaps we will get the appropriate action from the majority. But I know there have been a lot of people that have been perplexed over the President waiting for so long to sit down with the chairman of British Petroleum. I know our President has said he has been involved and been in control and been in charge since day one. We have heard that over and over. And I know my colleague, former Judge Carter, like me--maybe it's the judge in us--but even though the President has said he wasn't going to believe--something like he wasn't going to be able to believe whatever he said, so he didn't even meet with him. Well, as my fellow former judge knows, the best way to find out if you can believe them is bring them. Look them in the eye. Ask them questions. Find out if their answers are credible. Find out by the questions you ask whether they make sense, whether they're conflicting. And you find out whether you can trust somebody just by getting them in and talking to them. To make the statement that, for whatever reason, but if it was you can't trust what he says, then get him in and talk to him, for heaven's sake. I guess if you're used to condemning police officers before you know the facts, then, as we know from court cases, the best indication of future activity is often past history. It needs to rise to the level of being habit. But we're beginning to see a pattern developed here. But many have wondered, Why was the President easy on British Petroleum for so long? Lately, he talked about kicking rear ends and all this stuff, but this is over a month and a half later. So I was very interested in this article, apparently from the Washington Examiner. And the K Street Column appears on Wednesday by Timothy Carney. I'm just going to read the article because I found this very interesting and helped give me some insight into this relationship with British Petroleum. But the article says, ``As British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon oil rig was sinking on April 22, Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, was on the phone with allies in his push for climate legislation, telling them he would soon roll out the Senate climate bill with the support of the utility industry and three oil companies, including BP, according to the Washington Post.'' Let me explain here why this is called climate legislation. In the last couple of years, it became clear that there was significant evidence to indicate that global warming was not occurring. We've had indication one of the heads of the movement that is claiming it was, actually admits there has been no evidence that the planet has been warming since 1995. And the evidence has been the last few years it is probably cooling. I read an article in the wee hours this morning that South Africa is getting the first snow in decades. So, anyway, but apparently, the global warming movement realized this was a problem. And I read another article sometime back around this time that indicated, you know what? We've been saying carbon dioxide trapped the warmth in, but it may be, since the planet may be cooling, maybe it makes the Sun's rays bounce off the carbon dioxide. And so maybe CO2 is to blame for the cooling. So they realize if the planet is cooling, and you want to blame CO2, you're going to have to change the name, because global warming doesn't work if the climate is actually getting cooler. So they have started calling it climate legislation rather than global warming legislation. So that's why it's referred to this way, and that's why senators like Senator Kerry down the hall are referring to it as climate legislation. But, anyway, going back to the article, it says, ``Kerry never got to have his photo op with BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward and other regulation-friendly corporate chieftains. Within days, Republican cosponsor Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, repudiated the bill following a spat about immigration, and Democrats went back to the drawing board. But the Kerry-British Petroleum alliance for an energy bill that included a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gasses pokes a hole in a favorite claim of President Obama and his allies in the media that BP's lobbyists have fought fiercely to be left alone. Lobbying records show that BP is no free-market crusader but instead a close friend of Big Government whenever it serves the company's bottom line. While BP has resisted some government intervention, it has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, the subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.'' The article continues on, ``Now that BP's oil rig has caused the biggest environmental disaster in American history, the left is pulling the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG. Whenever a company earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market. As Democrats fight to advance climate change policies,'' AKA global warming when it's not warming. Back to the article, ``they are resorting to the misleading tactics they used in their health care and finance report: posing as the scourges of the special interest and tarring reform opponents as the stooges of big business. Expect BP to be public enemy number one in the climate debate. There's a problem. BP was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a lobby dedicated to passing a cap-and-trade bill. As the Nation's largest producer of natural gas, BP saw many ways to profit from climate legislation, notably by persuading Congress to provide subsidies to coal-fired power plants that switch to gas. In February, BP quit the United States Climate Action Partnership without giving much of a reason beyond saying the company could lobby more effectively on its own than in a coalition that is increasingly dominated by power companies. They made out particularly well in the House climate bill, while natural gas producers suffer.'' And I am still reading from the article: ``But 2 months later, BP signed off on Kerry's Senate climate bill, which was hardly a capitalist concoction. One provision BP explicitly backed, according to Congressional Quarterly and other media reports: a higher gas tax. The money would be earmarked for building more highways, thus inducing more driving and more gasoline consumption. ``Elsewhere in the green arena, BP has lobbied for and profited from subsidies for biofuels and solar energy, two products that cannot break even without government support. Lobbying records show the company backing solar subsidies including Federal funding for solar research. The U.S. Export-Import Bank, a Federal agency, is currently financing a BP solar energy project in Argentina. ``Export-Import has also put up taxpayer cash to finance construction of the 1,094-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan, Turkey--again, profiting BP. Lobbying records also show BP lobbying on Obama's stimulus bill and Bush's Wall Street bailout. You can guess the oil giant wasn't in league with the Cato Institute or Ron Paul on those.'' Continuing to read from the article, the last couple of paragraphs: ``BP has more Democratic lobbyists than Republicans. It employs the Podesta Group, cofounded by John Podesta, Obama's transition director and confidant. Other BP troops on K Street include Michael Berman, a former top aide to Vice President Walter Mondale; Steven Champlin, former executive director of the House Democratic Caucus; and Matthew LaRocco, who worked in Bill Clinton's Interior Department and whose father was a Democratic Congressman. Former Republican staffers, such as Reagan alumnus Ken Duberstein, also lobby for BP, but there's no truth to Democratic portrayals of the oil company as an arm of the GOP.'' Reading the last paragraph: ``Two patterns have emerged during Obama's Presidency: 1) Big business increasingly seeks profits through more government, and 2) Obama nonetheless paints opponents of his intervention as industry shills. BP is just the latest example of this tawdry sleight of hand. Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool.'' So I would like to yield time to my friend from Round Rock, the Georgetown area, and ask if that makes sense now that you know the full story and perhaps explains why the President was so slow to get after British Petroleum. I yield.

Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my friend, Judge Carter, and I appreciate your insights in this discussion. I would like to finish tonight by reading a couple of things of historical nature because I know our President has said we're not a Christian Nation. I understand that; I'm not going to debate that. But I know our history, I know where we came from, and I know that people in the United States are really victims of who it was that taught them and, therefore, only know so much as what they're taught. So I'd like to read this proclamation from George Washington, October 3, 1789. This was during his first year as President of the new United States. He said--and these are Washington's words, his proclamation, ``Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.'' ``And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all to render our national government a blessing to all the people, to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue.'' In fact, he mentioned in 1790, in his letter to the Hebrew congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, that, ``may the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants; while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the Father of all mercies scatter light, not darkness, upon our paths and make us all in our civil vocations useful here and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.'' This is a book that was put together by William Federer, ``Prayers and Presidents: Inspiring Faith From Leaders of the Past.'' So these are direct quotes. I will just finish with a couple things from Lincoln. This is from August 12, 1861, the first year that Abraham Lincoln was President. This is his own words: ``Whereas, when our own beloved country, once, by the blessings of God, united, prosperous and happy, is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him and to pray for His mercy, to pray that we may be spared further punishment, though most justly deserved; that the inestimable boon of civil and religious liberty may be restored.'' And this in closing, Abraham Lincoln's own words, his first inaugural, March 4, 1861: ``Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulties.'' It was true then, it's true now. I yield back.

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, it makes most of us just furious that BP appears to have gotten in such a hurry that with all the talk and all the help that Senator Kerry and the global warming bill and this administration on global warming and all the bills they were trying to get done, it makes it so outrageous when it appears they got in a hurry, they got sloppy, lots of safety problems. And this thing happens because it devastates not just--the worst tragedy is the loss of life, and then there are at least 17 others that were severely hurt, and our thoughts and prayers go out to them. And I know my friend says it's basically almost comical. I know he knows what it is to have personal loss in your life, and I do, including just in the last couple of months losing a brother and a cousin, funeral attended yesterday, and there's nothing like that kind of heartache. But then the next tragedy is what's being done to this country, what's being done to our ability to be energy independent and to force us to be more dependent on countries that don't like us, that help our enemies. There's tragedies in line behind those, most tragic the loss of life and the injuries and the hurt, but what they have done to our future is also really devastating. And we have got to take a step forward. And our friend from the Navy, Pete Olson, made it clear, when you're the leader, you've got to lead; it's not something you can vote ``present'' on. You've got to take charge. People are looking at you, and I know when I was in the Army, it certainly made an impression on me when a superior commissioned officer got in my face and said, Captain, no decision is a decision, and that's exactly right. No decision for day after day after day after day was a decision not to move forward, not to embarrass British Petroleum because they were being so helpful on the global warming bills, not to embarrass British Petroleum because we've got people in this administration that came straight from BP and helped the Clinton administration, made billions of dollars for the oil companies at the cost of the Federal Treasury back during the Clinton administration. All that coziness that President Obama talked about, we're seeing it here, and it's understandable. He wouldn't want to be too harsh until the country didn't give him any choice on such a close ally on these global warming bills like BP. I appreciate so much my friend's assistance, but I did want to kind of change gears here and talk a little bit for a few minutes about something very close to my heart, and I know, my friend's heart. He mentioned the words ``my Lord'' and I know he and I believe in the same Lord, but the book that we're pointed to discusses Israel, our friend and our ally Israel, and it continues to grieve me much to see the way this administration continues to snub Israel. This episode with the flotilla that was obviously an effort to force Israel's hand because they knew, Israel had made clear, we're going to have to defend ourselves, and that means checking any shipment to see if you're bringing in anything that can be used to blow up more Israelis, into the Gaza Strip. They made it very clear. That was very predictable, because when you study the course of human history and government's history, you know that when the strongest ally of a small country shows the world that there is space between us and our smaller ally, it is going to induce, many times, their enemies to make a move. This was entirely predictable. You didn't see a flotilla move toward Israel during the Bush administration. They knew there was no space between Israel and this country under President Bush. They see a lot of space, and it is dangerous, and I would just, Mr. Speaker, hope and pray and plead that this would stop. I have a letter that we're circulating getting signatures on asking the Speaker and Majority Leader Reid to please invite Prime Minister Netanyahu to come stand right there at that podium and speak to a Joint Session of Congress so that Iran and all of Israel's enemies will see both sides of the aisle standing and applauding the Prime Minister, the leader of our close ally Israel; so they will know there may be games being played some places around here in Washington, but when push comes to shove, we're going to defend our friend, our ally in Israel. We have shared belief systems in the value of human life. Both Israel and the United States believe women, for example, are not property, that they're not someone to have honor killings of if you think they've embarrassed your family. They're a country that does not believe that because you practice some other religion, it's okay to kill you. It is a country that believes, as Voltaire and Cicero said, apparently, that I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Now I know we're moving away from that, and there are maybe some people in this country, not maybe, there are people in this country that say basically, you disagree with me, I'm not only not going to defend your right to say it, I'm going to get your job taken away from you; I want to take all your assets; I want to kill any chance you will ever have of making a living; I want to embarrass your family. That's some of the stuff we've had, but that's a minority in this country. Israel has the same belief system in the value of human life that we do, and we should embrace that relationship and make sure that the world knows that that relationship is intact and that, if necessary to defend itself--I have this resolution, and we're circulating that. We're getting lots of signatures on that from Members of Congress. I'm hoping more and more Members of Congress will be signing on so that we can get this bill to the floor and the Speaker will feel pressured by people's reactions, pushing on their Representatives and their Senators to get them to come on board and sign, so we can let the world know, these are our friends, and we're not going to forsake them. And like a big strong brother would tell the enemy of his little brother, if you're going to attack my little brother, you're going to have to go through me because I'm going to make sure you have to pay if you hurt my little brother. That's the kind of friend we need to be to Israel so that Iran knows and Ahmadinejad knows, and it sounds like he honestly does believe that he could use nuclear weapons to hasten the end, to hasten the return of the mighty to rule and apparently even believes Jesus would come and help fight to put the mighty in charge of the whole caliphate. But he needs to find out that if he hurts our friend, that not only is there not going to be a caliphate, there will not be an Iran. We need to make this clear: You don't go start anything with Israel. But in the meantime, while Israel's leaders are being snubbed by an administration here, the centrifuges are just spinning, and the IAEA says they have enough nuclear material for two nukes. You read Ahmadinejad's quotes, he makes it very clear: It's not just Israel. Israel apparently in his mind is the little Satan, and we're the big Satan. And some of his quotes, he said here at the conference in Tehran, called ``The World without Zionism,'' Ahmadinejad stated, quote, God willing, with the force of God behind it, we will soon experience a world without the United States and without Zionism. Well, as the New York Times, they also quoted him as saying, This occupying regime Israel is to be wiped off the map. It is one thing when some little pee wee punk with no weaponry says I'm going to kick your rear-end or something like that. It's another when a Nation has enough enriched uranium to make two nuclear weapons, says I'm going to wipe you off the face of the earth, you will no longer exist when we're done, and he continues to make material for a nuclear weapon to do that. I really thought that this Nation would be a bit like the Roman empire, not that we're an empire; we are not imperial. That's why they still speak French in France and German in Germany and Japanese in Japan, because we're not imperialists. We fight for liberty wherever it needs to be fought for. But this is a Nation that all of the sudden after 9/11, we realized we may not take decades and decades and decades to meet our end because we know every Nation eventually ends, and I would not stay in Congress if I didn't believe we could turn things around and this country could go for a couple hundred more years. But the problem is, after 9/11, we saw we're very vulnerable, and if he gets a nuclear weapon--and this is common knowledge, otherwise I wouldn't be out there saying it--but he takes a nuclear weapon on a boat into New York Harbor, Houston, New Orleans, and it takes out a tremendous amount of our energy capabilities; Chicago and New York, big financial hubs; LA, Washington, wouldn't take but a handful of nukes and we're in big trouble. We may not be able to respond. We've got to take this stuff seriously. Some have referred to Israel as the miner's canary for the world, that when they're under assault, that the world is going to be next. That may be true, but we have got to take it seriously, and we have got to support our friend Israel, and I yield to my friend for comment.

Mr. GOHMERT. The people who are coming into the country illegally, obviously they are not worrying about what the laws in the wilderness area are. They can bring mechanical things and let them work there, but the Border Patrol cannot pursue them. Those areas look like roadways, and it is from the illegals coming through the wilderness areas. I want to mention one other thing. I know our President has said he has been doing everything from day one. He has been in control. He has been in charge, and we are doing absolutely everything we can. But then we find out many weeks after this explosion that actually the Netherlands and other countries have offered their ships, their expertise to come help us. The Netherlands, probably the best nation in the world for building dikes and building sand barriers and things, they volunteered to come over here. The problem is that would violate a union-pushed law back in the 1920s. I believe it was in the 1920s when it came. It says, if it is not an American ship, it can't operate and do the things that the Dutch were willing to do for us. I am sure the President is just a victim of whoever put that information in his teleprompter, but the fact is that everything has not been done. We had a hearing where we had Coast Guard people, and the people from Louisiana have made clear, they have been trying to do things since it started and they keep being hampered by this administration giving BP the responsibility to make all decisions. That didn't make a lot of sense until you read this article and find out just how cozy that relationship has been between BP and the majority leaders in the Senate and in the Congress and at the White House. But since I know the President believed, I am sure he wouldn't have said it, believed he is doing everything--actually, Presidents can suspend the Jones Act on their own. I know it was mentioned by my friend from the Houston area, but just to bring the fact home and give some specific information, Hurricane Katrina hit the coast of mainly Louisiana on August 29, 2005. Two days later, on September 1 of 2005, President Bush suspended the Jones Act so foreign ships could come in and assist in the hurricane cleanup. As I understand it, I heard that they were a very good help. They came in immediately, and so we have a track record of foreign countries that can come in and help us. President Bush continued the suspension until September 19, 2005. So 19 days was enough to allow those ships to come in and the foreign equipment to come in and help us clean up the disaster areas there on the coast in 2005. Now, the process requires signoff from Customs and Border Protection, from Department of Energy, and the Maritime Administration, but that can be done on an expedited basis and can be done all within 1 day. You could, in fact, give a call if you are President of the United States, you could give a call to Customs and Border Protection, DOE, and Maritime Administration and say, I want this done. If you are not going to do it, I am going to get somebody in your job that will get it done. Do it. Then get it for final signature to me. I will be finishing the 9th hole on the golf course such and such time; get it to me before I start the 10th tee. He could jump out of the cart and sign that Jones Act suspension and not even be interrupted from a round of golf. It could easily have been done all these days ago. Just like Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, and just think about this. As incompetent as this administration has repeatedly said the Bush administration was, just think about if an incompetent administration as totally worthless and incompetent as the Bush administration was, could get the Jones Act suspended within 3 days after Hurricane Katrina hitting, just think what these guys could have done. Since they are so much more competent and qualified, think how much quicker they could have done it since it took the Bush administration nearly 3 days.

Mr. GOHMERT. It certainly is part of Minerals Management Service. I have to say, it was a hunch when I heard President Obama talking about the cozy relationship between Big Oil and the regulators. It just hit me, and I sent a message to my staff and said find out where those two people are who the inspector general said were largely responsible or likely responsible for the price adjustment language being pulled out that cost our country billions of dollars while they were there in 1998 and 1999. They came back and said we have a press release that is talking about one of them, and this is the press release that I just have read from. So it is interesting. There is a cozy relationship between this administration, and it goes beyond this, and I am deeply troubled. I know whether you are in Congress, but especially President of the United States, we rely so much on our staff and those people around us to help us get information, and we often depend on what they give us. That is why I like to see it in print, verified. But the President said in his speech last night, We are running out of places to drill. Well, yes, because if you go back a year and a half ago you will find this same Secretary Salazar took checks that the government had already received at the end of 2008 for leases in the middle of the United States area and returned the checks and said it was his decision and this administration's decision that they were not going to allow those leases to go forward that were let at the midnight hour as the Bush administration was leaving. That was grossly unfair to what occurred, because the information that some of our folks in natural resources had found was that actually that was a 7-year process. He called it a midnight hour, that is when the checks came in, but no company is just going to rush in and say, Here is a check; I don't know what the land looks like. They have to do some testing, see what they think they might want to offer in the way of a bid. So that was a long 7-year process. And it was terminated. So when the President says we are running out of places to drill, yeah, I guess so, when you keep declaring all of these areas off limits, on shore, in the shallow gulf, all of these shallow and inland areas. People are not aware, but every time they declare a wilderness area, they put that land off limits to drilling. When they declare a wilderness area like this body has, and it is on the Mexico-Arizona border, that means there is no Border Patrol cars or helicopters or anything that can be on the ground in that area in the wilderness area. So there is probably not a month goes by that we don't declare more and more land unavailable for any mineral production.

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, I was just going to mention, former Vice President Gore. He has got a global warming problem of his own now, so I will probably just leave reference to him out entirely. Apparently his planet is warming right now. But it is interesting, too, when I heard the President talking previously about this cozy relationship between regulators and the Big Oil--here it is back again to the cynicism, and part of it I think is all those days as a judge--you know, it hit me. And I asked my office to check. And sure enough, they found a press release from the Department of Interior dated June 18, 2009, and I'm glad my friend was enlightened, as I was, to find out just how cozy British Petroleum and the White House and the global warming advocates here on Capitol Hill and the White House have been. There is apparently a very cozy relationship, which obviously made it difficult for him to want to condemn BP because they were the oil company that was jumping out there and saying, We support all this global warming stuff. Well, let me read you this press release. It's from the Department of the Interior. It says, Department of the Interior press release. Date, June 18, 2009. And the headline is, Secretary Salazar Names Sylvia V. Baca Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. Minerals Management should ring a bell with what's going on today. And then it has the city, ``Washington, D.C.--Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today named Sylvia V. Baca, a senior public and private sector manager in energy and environmental policy and programs, as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. The appointment does not require Senate confirmation.'' Because see, if it required Senate confirmation, as my friend knows, then they would have been really digging into what she had been doing before. But anyway, back to the press release from the Department of Interior: ``Sylvia brings more than two decades of management experience dealing with natural resource and environmental stewardship issues in both the public and private sectors and at all levels of government, Secretary Salazar said. Sylvia understands the value of partnerships and the dynamics of consensus building on difficult issues, and her professionalism and detailed knowledge of Interior's land and energy responsibilities will make her a valuable member of our leadership team. ``Baca, who currently is general manager for Social Investment Programs and Strategic Partnerships at BP America Inc. in Houston, has held several senior management positions with the company since 2001, focusing on environmental initiatives, overseeing cooperative projects with private and public organizations, developing health, safety, and emergency response programs, and working on climate change, biodiversity, and sustainability objectives. ``As Director of Global Health, Safety, Environment, & Emergency Response for BP Shipping Ltd. in London, Baca led a worldwide team to develop innovative and proactive energy and the environment initiatives. Among her accomplishments, she oversaw health, safety and environmental outcomes for an $8 billion shipbuilding program, resulting in the youngest, greenest and most technically advanced fleet in the world. The project has received numerous awards for its safety and environmental advancements. ``As vice president for Health, Safety and Environment, BP North America in Los Angeles, Baca served as policy adviser on environmental initiatives, such as climate change, biodiversity, sustainable development, land restoration, and air and water programs. Baca presented BP's Climate Change Program before congressional committees and served as a board member on the California Climate Action Registry, National Resources Council of America, NatureServe, and the University of Colorado Natural Resources School of Law. She developed collaborative partnerships with key constituents, trade associations, regulators, and other stakeholders on environmental legislative and regulatory issues.'' It gets better. ``From 1995 to 2001, Baca served as the Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management at the Department of the Interior, where she was the principal policy adviser to the Secretary of the Interior for environmentally responsible stewardship of public lands and resources. She was responsible for the development of national policy and management direction of the Bureau of Land Management, Minerals Management Service, and Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. ``Among her achievements, Baca formulated consensus-based Federal land and resource management policies and facilitated policy resolution for public land and mineral disputes with competing interest groups. She earlier served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management, and was the Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management.'' I'm going to stop reading here because what brought her to my attention for the first time I ever heard her name was when the inspector general, who had investigated a few years ago how in the world we ended up on our offshore leases having the price control adjustment language pulled out in 1998 and 1999, he mentioned that Ms. Baca was probably principally in the best position to talk about why it was pulled out. From the hearing, it certainly appeared that they were informed: We always put this price adjustment language in there. For some reason there were two people, Ms. Baca and another, who were involved apparently in seeing it was pulled out. And it has cost this country's Federal Treasury billions of dollars now that has gone to those who signed those leases in which she or somebody she knew about was pulling the language out regarding the price adjustment. When I asked the inspector general what Ms. Baca said about this when he questioned her, he said he had never questioned her because she left government service at the end of the Clinton administration and he couldn't talk to her now that she was in private business and in the private sector. I couldn't believe he wouldn't at least give her a call. Anyway, it turns out that cozy relationship that the President talked about is very real. It was present in the Clinton administration. It left during the Bush administration, but came back in June of 2009 as their own press release from the Department of the Interior indicates. I yield to my friend.

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, reclaiming my time, it appears that apparently former President George W. Bush must have had an awful lot of activity to have that kind of effect on global warming even back then. But then I find it interesting, because I know my friend recalls seeing the articles as I did. In fact, I recall in college being told that we were probably at the very beginning--some said we absolutely were at the very early stages of a new ice age that would end the world, end all people on the world with ice. Well, I just didn't believe it because as a Christian, you know, the Bible doesn't teach that the world ends with an ice age, and so I just knew that couldn't be right. But the people all around me were saying, Oh, yeah, we're at the beginning of a new ice age. It's the global cooling. It's going to ultimately have the whole planet frozen solid, and then who knows what life forms will emerge, if any, after the big ice age. Now I remember that, and I remember the discussions and discussing it with classmates and things, and I just could not buy back in the seventies that we were at the beginning of a new ice age. So I come into this thing a bit skeptical. And as I have said many times, there is an adage here in Washington that no matter how cynical you get, it's never enough to catch up. And this is exactly the kind of thing that makes you see that. It just creates too much cynicism.